Thoughts on SOPA Protest

I am quoted by Eric Deggans in his article on the SOPA protest yesterday.

"The blackout scared (legislators)," said Michael Hussey, editor of the Tampa Bay area political blog Pushing Rope, who paticipated in the protest. "It worked."

Marco Rubio didn't suddenly become a champion of the internet. Congress was flooded with angry emails and phone calls. Online web sites Google, Wikipedia and Facebook made people aware of the overreach of SOPA, and the Senate bill PIPA. Rubio and other Republicans weren't worried that web sites could be shut down for only providing a link to a web site that provided a link to pirated material. (Guilty by link assiociation.) Congress was worried about angry constiuents with pitchforks.

The internet is a powerful form of communication that the members of Congress have no understanding of. Billions of Americans use Google every day. The search engine reaches more people then a Republican talking to Rush Limbaugh on AM radio.

SOPA would require Facebook and Twitter to delete every questionable link that may lead to pirated material. Someone can just say that Twitter and Facebook lead to pirated material. No burden of proof is needed. It is literally impossible to go through the internet and delete every link. I have a hard enough time monitoring spam comments left on this blog. This just goes to show how clueless Congress is.

Rupert Murdoch hysterically attacked internet companies for lobbying Congress against SOPA and PIPA. Murdoch has given massive amounts of money to Republicans. Murdoch's hypocrisy is not surprising. If you don't think that Murdoch would not use SOPA to crush his internet competitors then you are in denial. Mudoch was just forced to pay 37 people for his company News of World hacking private phones. Murdoch uses technology in the most Orwellian of ways.

Tampa Tribune Blogger Controversy Gone Mainstream

St.Petersburg Times media columnist Eric Deggans has a summary of the Tampa Tribune controversy.

Tas and I came to the same conclusion as Tommy Duncan. The Tampa Tribune was gathering posts from RSS feeds (Pushing Rope's RSS feed was on the Politics homepage) and posted the content on the web sites. The problem was the Tampa Tribune never asked bloggers for permission. The web site TampaBlab receives permission before posting a bloggers work. The Tribune took posts off of TampaBlab and PR. I have no problem with the Tribune linking to posts. I would have preferred being asked if my posts could be published. I'm sure other PR bloggers feel the same way.

Another problem is no one editing the content the web robot posted on the Tribune. The hysterical results was several raunchy Zencomix strips appeared on the web site. I doubt a family publication wanted a comic strip of Larry Craig searching for Barack Obama's foreskin.

The Tampa Tribune now wants to talk to bloggers about a working partnership. I still haven't received a reply to my invoice.

Michael Jackson RIP

By now you know Michael Jackson is dead. TMZ broke the story. I didn't believe it at first. TMZ is hardly a reputable news source. Media critic Eric Deggans is correct about how news of Jackson's death quickly spread on Twitter. I agree with Deggans that TMZ and OK Magazine might have been gruesomely banking on Jackson's death in order to increase traffic. However, TMZ is the first to report Jackson had a heart attack. I'm extremely curious how TMZ found out so fast.

My two favorite Michael Jackson songs.

I no longer care about Jackson's bizarre past or will make excuses for his behavior. I do marvel at the artisticly creative period that was the Off the Wall and Thriller albums. Jackson was the biggest star on the planet during his peak. Jackson had the same on pop culture and fashion as Sinatra, Elvis and the Beatles.

	Michael Jackson - Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'
	Found at skreemr.com

	Michael Jackson - Billie Jean
	Found at skreemr.com

Update: the Jackson 5 performing a stunning acapella version of I'll Be There.

One More Time

Eric Deggans writes a post about my criticism of him of his defense of the St. Petersburg Times censoring the Jessica Sierra pdf file and sitting on the Mark Foley story.

My response to Deggans in the comments.

I love the post title.

Actually, the past two days have been the fastest news days in my blog's history. 6,000 visitors today and still going.

So, much as it bothers Pushing Rope, I was standing up for the idea that journalists need to make sure they have a fair and accurate story before they publish something that, if it turns out to be untrue, could still wreck a Congressman's career."

The Foley story was true and Ross received emails from pages from all over the country.

What Hussey doesn't point out, for some reason, is that the Times was among a host of Florida and national media outlets which got the same tip...

I am writing about your defense of The Times mishandling of the story. What are you implying? If Fox News disregarded the page's story then that is good enough for The Times. Hardly a compelling argument.

I linked to your comment and quoted part of it in a blog post. I thought my audience should read your side of the story. I'm not waging a personal war against you, Eric. Your defense of the Foley events strike me as weak. One can hardly call it The Times finest moment.

I agree with Deggans that the media shouldn't print rumors. What bothered me was that The Times blew off the story after they interviewed the page.

By the way Eric: Howard Kurtz is a Republican and a very bad media critic.

PoHo On My Deggans Post

Wayne Garcia takes issue with "one point" in my post on St. Petersburg Times Eric Deggans.

Deggans is not an ombudsman in any sense of the word; he is a media reporter, mostly writing about other media forms and companies. Both dailies in town generally leave the other alone and out of their news columns.

Garcia is correct. As I said in the Political Whore comments: the ombudsman remark was snark. My point was Deggans has a hard time finding fault in the publication he works for. Deggans is a good media critic, with the exception when it comes to his own newspaper. Deggans responsibilities at The St. Petersburg Times is not the same as the Washington Post's Deborah Howell.

Garcia's post brings up an unsaid truth. The Tampa Tribune and St. Petersburg Times have an unspoken agreement to not critique each other's journalism standards. The losers are readers that aren't aware if they are misinformed. Bloggers are happy to point out inaccuracies in news articles. With the exception of huge blogs such as Huffington Post and Daily Kos, weblogs do not reach the same audience as newspapers. Readers will never know if they read sloppy journalism. The hands-off attitude between the Tampa Tribune and St. Petersburg Times hurts citizens attempting to make informed choices.

Update: Eric Deggans takes exception with my previous post.

The fact is, I have found fault with many things my employer has done, most notably, the April TBT headline "He Died of Shame," which accompanied a story on WFLA weatherman John winter's suicide.

I wrote a direct criticism of that headline on my blog which was picked up by many national media blogs, including Poynter's Romenesko site and Mediabistro.com. I did it with little or no discussion with superiors and no idea what the professional consequences would be.

I also criticized TBT's pattern of running in-your face headlines to go with stories written for our main paper which are more fairly balanced.

When the New York Times ran a blindingly complimentary article about our business model, I wrote a blog post which pointed out that it was a mistaken hypothesis, given all the reductions we're going through these days.

I haven't read the articles Deggans mentioned. I have no oppinion pro or con. Deggans has the right to defend himself. Go read his comment.

Eric Deggans: Media Critic That Won't Criticize His Employer

I'm a fan of Eric's work, but he always defends the St. Petersburg Times. Deggans defends The St. Petersburg Times blacking out vulgar language in the transcript of Jessica Sierra's arrest.

Maybe i’m old fashioned. But I think the word censored should be reserved for omissions of higher importance than this one.

Sigh. Given that we already said in news stories that she offered oral sex to the office and hurled racial slurs at him after the arrest, I’m not all that worked up over the blackouts. I do wish we had given readers the choice to click through to an uncensored report, with knowledge that they would see some baldfaced language…

Political Whore blogger Wayne Garcia made the point that the internet is not the same as the family print edition of the Times. How many kids are going to read a pdf dirty words of a Z list celebrity? It makes little sense to treat online readers as if they were children.

Deggans is a media critic that never sees fault with his employer. Case in point is the Times handling of sitting on the Mark Foley story.

It's enough of a judgment call that I don't blame our reporters for deciding not to run the story -- though I wish we had gotten to the bottom of this before other media outlets did.

The email scandal which forced West Palm Beach Congressman Mark Foley to resign keeps getting weirder and weirder -- especially for the media.

The Times' government and politics editor filed a long-ish blog post Saturday explaining why we never wrote a story on Foley's milder emails to a page last year, even though we learned of them back then. Of course, it's easy to second-guess such judgments in hindsight, but if a similar flap earlier this year involving allegations against Charlie Crist proves anything, it's that we move carefully when it comes to explosive allegations which might be a disguised political attack, especially close to an election.

Foley's seat was safe. It wasn't a secret that CREW gave the FBI the original emails. The emails came from pages, not Democratic political operatives. The Times questioned one Louisiana page and blew him off. If a teenager went to the Times about a teacher sending these kind of emails, the Times would run with it and question the teacher. The Times never asked Foley if the email came from his office.

Eric Deggans makes a poor ombudsman for the Times. He ran a Times talking point.

Of course, it's easy to second-guess such judgments in hindsight, but if a similar flap earlier this year involving allegations against Charlie Crist proves anything, it's that we move carefully when it comes to explosive allegations which might be a disguised political attack, especially close to an election.

NEIL BROWN, Executive Editor:

In the days before the September primary, this newspaper was tipped to allegations about the personal life of Republican gubernatorial front-runner Charlie Crist, including a charge that he was involved in a paternity dispute over the birth of a girl 17 years ago.

If the Times truly believed this was a political attack than it would have been a major news story to expose the perpetrator. Politico exposed the anti-Muslim smear email on Barack Obama by the Hillary Clinton campaign. The Times thought it might be a smear, but didn't investigate further. That excuse doesn't make sense.

It was common knowledge that Foley was gay. That can hardly be called a rumor. That is why Foley didn't run for the Senate in 2006. Pages were warned to avoid Foley. Foley believed his political clout shielded him from repercussions. The Times justified Foley's mightier-than-God attitude.

Charlie Crist is a totally different subject than Foley. The Times compares rumors of a gay man having sex with other adults to a sexual predator. That is insulting to the gay community. Did the Times even hand the emails to law enforcement? That would have been the responsible thing to do. The best Deggans can do is say is the Times did nothing wrong. Actually, the Times did nothing. That is why people were upset with the newspaper.

Update: PoHo on My Deggans Post

Florida This Week

Florida This Week is my favorite political talk show. The show is intelligent and people don't scream at each other like insane idiots. Topics are the Martin Anderson settlement, local elections, Sarasota voting machines. and SB 1458. The panelists are Eric Deggans, Jeremy Wallace, Sara Romeo and David Hurley.

The most jaw-dropping comment is Hurley trying to maintain that the 18,000 undervotes in Sarasota County was because of voter apathy. Lorei asked Hurley why the other counties voting in the congressional race didn't have the same level of undervoting. Hurley says he doesn't know. The short answer is Hurley would rather amuse voter apathy than deal with the possibility that Florida is using faulty voting machines. The actual answer is a Republican won and that is all Hurley cares about.