Thursday, July 31, 2008

ABC News - Editing Away Dissent

I spent this morning trying to register my frustration with Jake Tapper's piece on the ABC News blog.


Every time I posted it was deleted shortly thereafter. I posted comments such as:

Obama did not use the words "racist" or "xenophobic", you did!
and
Does Jake Tapper take money from the McCain campaign?
When you state it as a question it makes it almost true!
Be a reporter not a conveyor of political talking points.

Here is a comment that was deleted:




I also noticed that many of the comments supporting Obama and pointing out the hypocrisy of the piece were also being deleted. Anyone reading the user comments could be led to believe that the concensus out there is pro-McCain.

The sinister thing here to me is the editing or deleting of dissent from readers. Is this ABC News trying to protect itself from being revealed for its shabby MSM methods, or is it Jake Tapper trying to con readers in to thinking the prevailing opinion is pro-McCain?

Have others experienced this kind of stuff?

3 comments:

Unknown said...

YES! I have been following that article since it was first written last night - and had seen at least 50 comments censored. AT LEAST! I should've been saving screen shots because there were some beautiful posts that displayed why Mr. Tapper's article was just flat wrong. I authored another post later, asking what the requirements were for the censorship, and WHO was doing the censoring...it was deleted. Mind you, the comments I wrote and the majority that I saw deleted were not slanderous or containing swear words - they merely dissented. Hmmm. NOT GOOD ABC! Lets blow this thing up.

Unknown said...

This was about the fifth thing I wrote, which also got deleted, btw - click on the "contact us" link at the far bottom of the page of Mr Tappers article and TELL ABC this is a bunch of bunk (both the article and the censorship creating a one sided argument):



Make sure you save your comments, to repost them once deleted.

The author of this article seems to have lost it. He is bound and determined to "catch" Obama doing something. Read another journalist's sound interpretation.


read this:

mediamatters dot org

/columns/200804080001

Scott STARKEY said...

The "Fireshot" plugin for Firefox makes screenshots a cinch.