One More Time

Eric Deggans writes a post about my criticism of him of his defense of the St. Petersburg Times censoring the Jessica Sierra pdf file and sitting on the Mark Foley story.

My response to Deggans in the comments.

I love the post title.

Actually, the past two days have been the fastest news days in my blog's history. 6,000 visitors today and still going.

So, much as it bothers Pushing Rope, I was standing up for the idea that journalists need to make sure they have a fair and accurate story before they publish something that, if it turns out to be untrue, could still wreck a Congressman's career."

The Foley story was true and Ross received emails from pages from all over the country.

What Hussey doesn't point out, for some reason, is that the Times was among a host of Florida and national media outlets which got the same tip...

I am writing about your defense of The Times mishandling of the story. What are you implying? If Fox News disregarded the page's story then that is good enough for The Times. Hardly a compelling argument.

I linked to your comment and quoted part of it in a blog post. I thought my audience should read your side of the story. I'm not waging a personal war against you, Eric. Your defense of the Foley events strike me as weak. One can hardly call it The Times finest moment.

I agree with Deggans that the media shouldn't print rumors. What bothered me was that The Times blew off the story after they interviewed the page.

By the way Eric: Howard Kurtz is a Republican and a very bad media critic.