I got skewered today in the washington post!

so this writer for the washpost (terrence o'hara) calls me last week saying he wants to do a piece on how my former classmate murry gunty tried to silence my blog and the controversy around it. and wow. if you read his story today  you will see that he makes me out to be this vicious blogger with a personal vendetta and murry out to be this innocent victim whose reputation was maligned by the blog world.

my only guess is that murry hired a pr firm which helped place this story.

mr. ohara says things like

"I have nothing personal against the guy at all," said Pincus, whose original post included numerous disparaging personal remarks about Gunty. "I write about ethics all the time. It's something I'm passionate about. If Murry had responded on my blog, the whole thing would have just ended there."

now let me ask you. if i had said such juicy disparaging personal remarks wouldnt mr ohara want to publish any of those instead of just referring to them?

mr ohara goes on to say

Gunty's photo was posted on Pincus's blog and various aspects of his life and work were ridiculed.

this HAS to be placed by a pr flack. what 'aspects of murry's life' could i have ridiculed? and wouldnt that make great copy to include to?

i consider this an attack on the blog world by sleepy, scared old mainstream media. beware the dangers of running afoul of the bloggers. they're vicious. how about a washington post reporter trying to portray a slanted story for some other agenda?

at least murry got his facts all out there. and yes, he could have responded to my blog. does mr ohara give me the same opportunity?

he says that a six apart staffer asked me to 'at least remove murry's name'. sorry, not how it happened. i was told i had to remove his name which i fought since it was a total violation of my rights.

then he includes a a few comments from this guy stan collender who must be the PR flack who got this story published. you gotta love these quotes. this guy spins it that somehow i misrepresented the facts and innocent people like murry can get their reputations maligned in the process. one might think that your reputation gets maligned NOT when you commit fraudulent acts, but apparently it's just when they get reported. i guess that's technically correct.

Stan Collender, a public relations specialist at Qorvis Communications LLC in the District, said the potential for bloggers to damage the reputation of a business or person is a growing concern.

"It's like pamphleteering on the corner, only its cheaper, quicker and vastly more broad," Collender said. "But unlike the traditional media, it's completely unregulated in that there's no fact checking, no editing. It has all the potential for creating a lot of damage to someone's or something's reputation very quickly, and it's almost impossible to eliminate it. Any unsubstantiated rumor has a very good chance of getting out there."

However, Collender said it is usually a mistake to try to squelch it.

"If you respond to this sort of thing you give it credit it doesn't deserve," he said.

wow. one might think i made the whole murry story up. i guess the point of this story is that business people are now in danger of bloggers fabricating stories that ruin their sterling reputations.

let me help mr's collender and o'hara rest better. there are plenty of real stories out there about business people acting unethically. we can barely talk about all of those. so we really dont have time to make up stories attacking innocent victims.

i would LOVE to hear what you all think about this and if you agree that this was an unfair represenation and portrayal of this story please blog it and email mr. o'hara.

[two other quick add-on notes: first, o'hara failed to mention that the washington post was formerly an investor in tribe.net. he probably didnt even know. second, if the PR guy quoted is working for murry, i wonder if that should have been disclosed for honest reporting?]

Comments

[gigi]

Actually, given the frictionless web enabling anyone curious to dig deeper, I think this is great. A few folks (regular readers)latched on to the story when first published here. A few more folks learned of it through the attempts (by whomever)to squelch. Now, there is a whole new legion of WP readers who now know of the story, and those more curious will find their way back to the archives and be enlightened. In this case, so far, the publicity is good. Revel in it. Your rants on ethical behavior, or lack thereof, have been read by even more folks than usual.