Citizen Journalism OUTED Foley
Caroline just posted a comment on the Political Vine Site which links to a story by Andrew Bolton on The Hill. The Bolton article details exactly how the Foley scandal was broken to the press, and debunks much of the SPIN Republicans are trying to put into play to defuse this Republican Debacle.
Bolton states that the whistleblower was a paid GOP staffer at the time the documents were handed over to the press. He goes on to say:
D.C.-based media organizations declined to report on the e-mails. But one, ABC News, reported on the e-mails last week after a Weblog, stopsexpredators.blogspot.com, published a few of the exchanges between Foley and the former page. But those blog-reported e-mails did not include correspondence between the page and a House aide in which the teen expressed anxiety about Foley’s intentions.After ABC News disclosed the e-mails exchanged last year between Foley and a former page, it reported about much more sexually explicit communications between Foley and a different former page over an “instant messaging�? (IM) software program in 2003.
The first Web report of the relatively tame e-mails appears to have prompted someone to share the explicit IM messages. After ABC News obtained those messages, in which Foley discussed sexual acts with the second former page, a scandal mushroomed on Capitol Hill, and Foley resigned.
The source who provided the e-mails that ABC News first reported on its blog, denied sharing the more explicit IMs.
So while the primary source of the e-mails which kicked off the scandal was a House GOP aide, the trigger of the news coverage was the weblog.
The creator of stopsexpreditors.blogspot.com is unknown. An interview request e-mailed to the site was not returned.
It’s no wonder the owner of the blog is being cagey. He or she has received death threats, according to entries in the blog. Commenting was shut off, due to the hateful nature of the commenting, and the blog owner has stated that all comments must come through the email form, probably to aid tracing in the event of more death threats. Sheesh!
This is a great example of exactly how valuable Citizen Journalism is. Two Florida papers were given the original emails last year and decided not to pursue the issue, and I can guess that partisan politics played some role in their suppression at that time.
As I’ve said before, it’s definitely time to clean House.
Technorati Tags: Citizen Journalism, Stop Sex Predators Blog, Foley, Republican Whistleblower
