Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 07:50:02 -0500 (EST)
From: Alan McConnell <alan@clark.net>
Cc: online-news@marketplace.com, schwartj@twp.com (John Schwartz),
        alan@clark.net (Alan McConnell)
Subject: Slanted articles about the Net

According to David H. Rothman:
> 
> Here we go again, folks. The Washington Post, from which Jim Exon cited a
> misleading  net.porn article to justify the introduction of his "decency"
> act, is at it once more.
> 
> This time it's run a grotesquely slanted piece on a student at the
> University of Maryland who posted hearsay to the Net. 
> 
> "The incident," says the Post front page, as if sending stage directions to
> the White House and Hill, "spotlighted the potential for abuse of the vast
> and unregulated Internet." I could easily accept that sentence if only the
> article had had a little balance. It didn't. 
     Thanks, David, for posting about this story, which shocked me when
     I read it yesterday.  Turns out that the student's post to "11
     Internet news groups"(sic) about alleged abuse of a girl by members
     of her family generated a "half-dozen" subsequent
     calls to the family.  But the family is about to be destroyed
     by this, claims the father.

     Then we have some heavy breathing by one Dale Herbeck, an associate
     professor(sorry, make that Associate Professor) of communications
     at Boston College.  I wonder if Mr Herbeck is known to anyone
     on this list; maybe I'll call him up<g>.(He was probably found
     through ProfNet)

     You turn to the inside page to discover: "Traditional civil laws
     governing slander, liber and invasion of privacy likely would 
     apply to the case, and criminal law governing harassment might
     come into play, [experts] said."

     Then some explanation by the story writers -- let's not let them
     off the hook, they are Todd Shields and Scott Bowles, with
     contributions from Brian Mooar and, alas, Margot Williams(she
     is usually very savvy) -- of what a creep the student is(NB:
     I didn't say he is a creep, the article did).

     And, way late in the article, we find: "The father said aspects
     of the message were true -- but blown out of proportion."

     Couple of other heavy breathers quoted:  J.A.N. Lee, professor
     of computer science at Virginia Tech, and Frank Connolly, a
     professor of information systems at American University.  Again
     I suspect ProfNet.

Moral: just watch out for the Post.  They are powerful, and they feel
very threatened.  I live in the D.C. area, but you couldn't pay me to
subscribe.  Admittedly, they do have some very good people working for
them;  I'm cc-ing this post to one of them.

Best wishes,

Alan McConnell

-- 
Alan McConnell       Education cuts don't heal.
Pixel Analysis       ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI.
(alan@clark.net)     Linux!  The choice of a GNU generation.