The Hiltzik blog suspension is the first item in Howard Kurtz’s Media Notes column today. Howard, who wrote the Post‘s initial news article on the debacle, still doesn’t seem to understand: It’s not the pseudonyms. It’s the sock-puppetry! The concept of Hiltzik’s pseudonyms defending and praising each other doesn’t come across at all, which is what allows a Hiltzik defender quoted in the column to say this:
It’s unclear why Hiltzik would take such a risk, but not everyone is critical. Claude Brodesser, who writes a Los Angeles column for the Web site Media Bistro, writes that anonymous posting is part of the Internet culture and that even reporters should enjoy that freedom. “Hiltzik might have cloaked his identity — something seemingly at variance with the Times’ policies — but what he did was hardly lying or, for that matter, extortion,” Brodesser says.
This is the official media spin coming across in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the AP: Hiltzik’s error was using pseudonyms. The End.
Aaargh. Maybe sheer repetition will drive the point home. It’s not the pseudonyms. It’s the sock-puppetry!
Kurtz does discuss Hiltzik’s e-mail snooping incident, and quotes some inflammatory stuff that Hiltzik put out under his own name:
Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times hasn’t exactly been pulling his punches.
He has ripped “the right-wing noise machine Hugh Hewitt,” calling the radio host a “close-minded nincompoop” who parades his “ignorance” and shows “his sedulous devotion, like a sucking remora fish, to the imploding George W. Bush.”
He has assailed “the reactionary Kate O’Beirne” for suffering a “loss of bladder control” in her televised comments.
He has slammed Los Angeles writer Cathy Seipp as “one of those people whose desire to Tell it Like it Is tends to be hampered by lack of information.”
Which makes the sock-puppetry even more perplexing. It’s not like Mikekoshi said the nasty stuff that Hiltzik wasn’t willing to say using his own name . . .
P.S. One of my commenters has this observation regarding the media’s overlooking the sock-puppetry angle:
It’s all about framing the argument. They frame the argument around the issue of pseudonyms, a particularly convenient issue because they know it can be a sensitive topic in the blogosphere. So virtual ink is spilled on an irrelevant issue and thus the blatant dishonesty of Hiltzik’s posts is hidden. The sock puppet issue will never get out to most of the people who read printed paper. Did we somehow forget that distraction is the bread and butter of the press?
Sometimes you just have to admire them. Public opinion is putty in their hands. The best we can do is create a temporary embarrassment and maybe restrain some of the more outrageous behavior of their reporters. What happened is what they say happened. Haven’t you heard? I read it in the newspaper.
We’ve come a long way, but the big boys are still firmly in control.
Yup.
UPDATE: Thanks to Instapundit for the link.
UPDATE x2: But why the WaPo kill the initial, much funnier headline for the column?