Monday, December 14, 2009

DMN Richardson blog comment removal

As noted over on DC's entry about DMN blog comment removal, I accidentally had an opportunity to see what comments were deleted on the COR Sales Tax / Asterisk article.

Here are all the ones I could recover.



[This comment violates dallasnews.com Terms of Service and has been deleted.]


My guess is; they cooked the books.



[This comment violates dallasnews.com Terms of Service and has been deleted.]

Why would someone write such a story in the firstplace with such a misleading headline and without all the facts, and then have to do a tail-between-the-legs correction? Looks like someone needs to spend less time texting, polishing his shoes, and swallowing what Keffler's Krew feeds him, and more time beating the streets and investigating the etch-a-sketch numbers being put out by the city. Must be using the Bernie Made-off Accounting Made Simple or Generally Assinine Accounting Principles (GAAP, yeh, a really big one) methods in putting these figures together.



[This comment violates dallasnews.com Terms of Service and has been deleted.]

Note: there was an identical dupe at 2:48 that was also deleted, but that's reasonable.


Regardless of where you get the numbers, an investigative reporter needs to verify the information and data before publishing a story. To blame someone else for not doing this is unacceptable and a cop-out. Anyone who has any clue of what is really going on with the economy knows that double digit increases in sales tax collections is impossible. With the city's economic base being far smaller than many other larger cities, the percentage increases and decreases are going to be skewed one way or the other, and the main focus should be on absolute figures. Regarding the comments of Mr. Anonymous Sick of Crazy People (aka Mr. Happy Talk), sounds like he should be onboard with getting rid of the city council if he really feels that way. What he/she needs to understand is that city and their cohorts are the ones who initiated the malicious and false slander campaign attacks against reasonable and informed residents. This includes the "crazy" label which has been slapped on many reasonable residents who have met with city officials and attempted to effect positive change for the benefit of all citizens (and not for a select few of elitist kleptocracts) to no avail. Why, because they are not considered by those in control as having any right to do so (to paraphrase the city attorney's "dasturdly" view of the general public). This is what is killing the city, along with the root corruption, holding closed door meetings, and violating the City Charter, and a willful failure in many instances to adhere to and enforce the existing laws. It's about time that rocks started being overturned and the magnifying glass focused on the city - we neet to get rid of the crooks, hold those fully accountable and responsible for any misdeeds they may have committed, right the wrongs, and most importantly, elect officials that will put their sworn oath of office vows to uphold the City Charter, City Ordinances, and all other existing laws, and exercise their inherent legal and fiduciary responsibilities, above and beyond all else.


[This comment violates dallasnews.com Terms of Service and has been deleted.]


Children! Children! For those of us who have been tuning in for the past few years, this looks to me like a repeat performance of the December annual event. What is disgusting about it is that the story line hasn't changed, and City officials have a pension for publishing half-truths to mislead the electorate, and like a gang of pathological hucksters, make a tidy living at it.


There were more comments/deletions but they happened after I left for work so I don't know what they were.

9 comments:

dc-tm said...

Thanks for posting this Bloggermouse. None of those posts seem to be very harsh. It is very surprising. Maybe I am just not very sensitive to what is said, bu do not see anything bad there.

Anonymous said...

Bloggermouse, this is great. The content of these emails proves the point of the accusations about the DMG blog and the pressure they are getting from the city government.

Anonymous said...

Hey, bloggermouse - thanks. This just shows how Belo/DMN buckled under political pressure from Chuck Eisemann and Gary Slagel. It's amazing - and odd - that the DMN would choose to enforce their "terms of service" on only one DMN blog. Just check out the DMN Dallas ISD blog - it's filled with profanity, accusations, etc.

Next thing you know, the DMN will be changing their name to Pravda. Welcome to Amerika.

Erik Rodriguez / DMN Editor said...

Hello, thought I'd post here. I'm the editor who made the decision to delete the posts. I can assure you it had nothing to do with upper management. I just read the posts and comments and, as editor on the Richardson blog, made the judgement call myself to delete them.

Why did I delete the comments? The explanation is really not complicated. We have these Terms of Service that state that you cannot call someone derisive names -- like "Slagovich" -- or impersonate another person, like someone else did. Our rules don't allow folks to call people liars or to make exorbitant claims that cannot be proven, claims like "we bought this past municipal election fair and square." I deleted the comment about Ian because saying he needs to spend less time "polishing his shoes" is considered a personal attack and is not allowed under our Terms of Service, plain and simple.

If you think these remarks are no worse than what is already out there on our blog, that is your opinion to believe. However, such comments open us up to liability, which is why we have Terms of Service. I can assure you the listing of comments you have above is incomplete ... and no, I will not provide the full text of the other comments that were deleted -- see my previous sentence.

So there's your answer. I know it would be more interesting if there was a conspiracy theory to latch onto here, but really, there's not. Hope this clears things up.

frater jason said...

I didn't have a time to add any real comments on this post this AM, so let me take a moment to do so.

* Thanks to ER for chiming in; I appreciate it.

* Like DM, I did not find the posts to be harsh, particularly by the standards of other comments on DMN blogs (and the John Adams post was downright compelling). I found their removal curious and so posted them so we could talk about them and suss out what's going on. I do not claim to endorse or understand the positions in the deleted comments; I am new enough to COR that I am still learning what the local concerns are.

* I take ER at his word when he says it is a pure TOS issue. I would expect to see similar application of TOS to other blog comments if the DMN is really concerned about legal exposure. I would remind ER that AOL got in trouble all those years ago precisely because they were deleting certain posts; it made them _de facto_ editors of the rest of the material and therefore responsible for it. A hands-off approach might have been safer for DMN. Perhaps they got bad advice from someone.


* I find it interesting that Slagovich itself is a derisive name.

* The RCC Charter Member "impersonation" looked like satire to me and not an attempt at identity theft. If DMN were serious about impersonation they'd let us register accounts instead of typing in a random username each time we post.

* "I can assure you the listing of comments you have above is incomplete".
Well, right. I think I said that twice up there; I don't have all the deleted comments saved. It was an accident I had any at all.

* Full disclosure: I have not been a giant fan of the DMN, as I was a subscriber to DTH before this bit of fair play: "On December 8, 1991, Belo, owner of The Dallas Morning News, bought the Times Herald for $55 million and closed the paper the next day." Bastids. Still, I think the local city blogs are the exact right move to help DMN survive. Get a consistent approach to blog comments and you've got a winner.

dc-tm said...

Enjoyed your analysis bloggermouse. Thanks

Anonymous said...

I wonder if "Slagovich" references are replaced with "Mayor Gary Slagel who has been linked directly to disgraced Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich" -- would that be acceptable to the DMN editors?

That connection has been documented by several news organizations. And it would not be (Heaven forbid) a humorous play on words.

Perhaps the DMN blog editor can give us his opinion here, since he has been wandering around the 'net, checking on public comments recently.

dc-tm said...

I like your thought process Will. Good idea. :)

Anonymous said...

Bloggermouse - outstanding summary. I agree - by Erik Rodriguez deleting any posts makes the Dallas Morning News completely liable for any and all content on all of their blogs. That would be considered prima facie evidence of them being defacto editors, and responsible for content. They'd been better off on all accounts by just leaving it alone. Now, they are getting some big public black eyes.

As for the 'RC Charter member', it was, indeed, a hilarious satire; the type of thing you see all over the blogosphere. And, who knows, some of those elderly folks in the Richardson Coalition might be nutty enough to write something like that!

As for the name "connection" between Gary Slagel and now-empeached and disgraced IL governor Rod Blagojevich, my personal fave is "Slagojevich" (pronounced Sla-goy-uh-vich - which rhymes with Bluh-goy-uh-vich - which is how you pronounce the former governor's name). Why is it not surprising that Slago learned "pay to play" from the IL master?

Keep up the good work, Bloggermouse.