Bloggasm

After Alaska Governor Sarah Palin announced today that she would step down the news made front page headlines and quickly spread online. But another story concerning Palin also cropped up: A Huffington Post blogger named Erik Nelson, whose bio states that he has “written for several comedy websites and published short fiction while living in the deep South,” published a “satirical” post claiming that Palin was trying to spread “retardation” across America. The post specifically referenced her son Trig.

After outraged bloggers and Twitter users began linking to the piece, it was pulled from the site. Thinking that HuffPo editors were the ones that pulled it, I emailed Nelson to request the interview.

Here was his response:

Simon,

No story, I pulled it down. I got some emails from offended loved ones of the retarded. No one was seeing the absurdity of Palin hiding behind her children, so my piece was not accomplishing anything good. That’s all that happened.

Best,

Erik

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How a Kos diarist helped spark McCain-Palin infighting

At a quarter-past the hour, Daily Kos diarist Liz Arnett posted a diary featuring several videos tying Sarah Palin to the Alaskan Independence Party, a pro-secession fringe group in Alaska. The diary rocketed up the rec. list and a few hours later, georgia10 followed up with a front page post summarizing the questions raised by Palin’s apparent connections.

Later that day, the story was picked up by reporters at ABC, The Atlantic, and TPM. They fleshed out some of the important details: it was Todd, not Sarah, who was actually a member of the party, they found, but Sarah had addressed the AIP and members of the AIP felt Sarah was sympathetic to their pro-secession cause.

Flash-forward six weeks, and Salon published a detailed article by Max Blumenthal and David Neiwert showing the tight connections between the Palins and the secessionists, attracting CNN’s interest.

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Sam Sethi: The Lawsuit

Many of you know all about Sam Sethi, the former TechCrunch writer who left after a disagreement and then went on to create BlogNation. Two days ago Sethi filed a lawsuit against us for libel and other issues. As we always do, we’re posting the litigation threats and will continue to fight the litigation publicly. See our previous posts involving YouTube, Marvel, Rivals, Mediascrape EarthComber and Richard Figueroa.

I don’t need to go into much additional background here. My post from late 2007 gives the complete history of this guy and what he has done. Our response letter, posted below, goes into a lot more detail to back up statements we’ve made.

There are also recent developments not covered in the old posts or these letters below. First, Sethi has been sued by former employee Oliver Starr for unpaid wages, and that case is ongoing. Second, Sethi has admitted that in November 2006 he was barred from being a director or manager of of any company for eight years following the order. He was subject to criminal prosecution and would be personally responsible for debts of a company if he contravened the order. Sethi now says he had the order overturned, which may or may not be true. We’re trying to track down the facts that led to the order - whatever they are, they can’t be pretty.

Needless to say, we think these claims have no merit, otherwise we would not have written the posts in the first place, or would have retracted.

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TMZ has received a fair amount of coverage over the last few days for being first to break the news of Michael Jackson’s death, beating both the LA Times and CNN (which waited until the LA Times confirmed the death to report on it). But as a blog post in the LA Times pointed out today, sometimes it’s more important to confirm a fact than be the first to report it.

Has technology’s ability to deliver information at such a rapid pace corrupted us? It’s one thing to marvel at how social media sites have helped spread Iranian news we might not have attained due to censorship — and with such timeliness; it’s quite another to have become a culture that prizes speed over confirmed facts.

There’s some evidence that Google users may find credibility more important than speed. I was chatting with an editor at the LA Times who pointed out that Google Trends showed that more searches were aimed at the Times’ coverage of Jackson compared to TMZ’s reporting. Below is a screenshot from that day’s Google Trends:

As you can see, three different searches related to the LA Times — including one directly referencing Jackson — were more popular than TMZ. This gives at least some evidence that though TMZ broke the story of the death, Google searchers were checking in at the LA Times to confirm it.

The Times’ editor I spoke to said there was no ill will toward TMZ, but pointed out that CNN is owned by TMZ’s parent company, and even that network waited for the LA Times rather than relying on the celebrity gossip site.

But now that TMZ was proven correct, does this mean that mainstream outlets will trust its coverage in the future? What would it take for it to become a trusted news brand?

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A Singapore survey of 1,000 bloggers — many of whom reside in the US, found a wide consensus that most bloggers follow some kind of “informal” code of ethics.

Blogger ethics: proper attribution > accountability

Both classes of bloggers agreed on the highest ethical priority: proper attribution of information that came from other sites. Personal bloggers appeared to be willing to tell white lies when necessary, as they rated avoiding harm above telling the truth; these two were reversed when it came to nonpersonal bloggers. Oddly, even with their focus on proper attribution, both groups rated accountability last among these properties.

The researchers recognized that there could be a difference between the behaviors rated as important within the community in general and those that individuals chose to hold themselves to, so the survey included separate questions about practices. For non-personal bloggers, everything other than accountability was tightly clustered around six on a scale with a maximum of seven, indicating a strong bias towards ethical practices. For personal bloggers, minimizing harm came out on top, and everything other than accountability was rated above 5.7. Notably, within both groups, there was only one exception to the following trend: bloggers think they practice ethical behavior to a higher degree than they think should occur within the blogging community at large.

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Fortunately, Gawker obtained a screen grab before the post was edited

Perez Hilton Growing More Vile By the Second

We knew something like this would happen!!

Michael Jackson was taken by ambulance from his Holmby Hills home to a nearby Los Angeles hospital on Thursday afternoon!!

Supposedly, the singer went into cardiac arrest and the paramedics had to administer CPR!!!

His mother is even on the way to visit him!!!

We are dubious!!

Jacko pulled a similar stunt when he was getting ready for his big HBO special in ‘95 when he “collapsed” at rehearsal!

He was dragging his heels on that just like his upcoming 50 date London residency at the 02 Arena, of which he already postponed the first few dates!!!

Either he’s lying or making himself sick, but we’re curious to see if he’s able to go on!!!

Get your money back, ticket holders!!!!

And here’s the revised post:

Michael Jackson was taken by ambulance from his Holmby Hills home to a nearby Los Angeles hospital on Thursday afternoon!!

The singer went into cardiac arrest and the paramedics had to administer CPR!!!

His mother is even on the way to visit him!!!

The mainstream media is grudgingly acknowledging today that they were bested by a gossip blog in breaking the news that Michael Jackson had died.

TV misses out as gossip website TMZ reports Michael Jackson’s death first

On a day already consumed by the death of ’70s TV star Farrah Fawcett, Jackson’s death sent TMZ into overdrive. Yet the tabloid sensibilities of the site, which is owned and operated by divisions of Time Warner, and its accompanying syndicated TV show apparently made rivals queasy. Many outlets around the world instead credited the news to the Los Angeles Times, which bannered Jackson’s death on its website at 2:51 p.m.

By 4 p.m., a huge crowd had gathered outside UCLA Medical Center, and celebrities and fans alike were submitting so many messages mourning his death on Twitter that the service intermittently crashed. CNN was still relying on “reports” from other media and telling viewers it could not independently verify the death. Only when the coroner’s office confirmed Jackson’s death did CNN relay it as outright fact to viewers, at 4:25 p.m.

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