I've been active online since the days of 300 baud modems and text-driven message boards, and one of the first lessons I learned was to ignore the trolls. Everyone online has an opinion, and if you travel down the road of trying to argue your side to everyone who disagrees with you, then you'll never get anything done.
When I wrote a few pieces about "Occupy" and a source who argued that the federal government was involved in coordinating the responses, I expected some serious pushback. The biggest challenge I had was that my source wouldn't go on the record and if it weren't for the fact that the source was someone I had known for a long time, I wouldn't have written the first piece. Ultimately, I know that when you're writing a piece using sources who won't be identified, you run the risk some people won't believe you. Fair enough.
What I hadn't anticipated was the often laughable pushback I got from some well-known blogs, primarily conservative-leaning ones. I've found myself getting slapped around quite a bit over the past couple of weeks, which I can certainly handle. I'm a big boy, and having someone argue I'm an unwilling tool of socialists (or in the case of a couple of emails, a pawn of Karl Rove) doesn't phase me.
But these posts have built up this meme in some unexpected places and it surfaced again today in this piece on Crooks and Liars. I'm not going to go through the piece point-by-point. Frankly, I have a life and it's not that important to me. But I did want to address a couple of points.
First, despite a lot of snarky comments about my journalism skills, none of these people have contacted me with questions. I've had a few comments on twitter and several emails, all of which I've answered. But the same people who thought I needed a source that was willing to go public had no problem asserting all sorts of idiotic motives to my pieces without speaking to me.
Despite what the C&L piece says, I haven't walked back anything about my piece. Yes, it's remotely possible that I've somehow been punked by federal officials I've known for a long time and worked with in the past. But I haven't seen the slightest indication of that and until I do, I stand by the story.
Second, I'm always amused by the references to Phil Anschutz, who owns the company who owns Examiner. Yes, I think even Mr. Anschutz would agree he's probably pretty far to the right politically. But I wouldn't know him if he stood in front of me wearing a name tag. I haven't gotten the slightest bit of editorial feedback from anyone at Examiner on the topics of what I write. Which, to be honest, is one of the reasons I write here. It's certainly not for the money or the prestige. It's that I can write about topics that I care about but that don't mesh with my typical editorial focus.
Crooks and Liars also passes along a bit of the standard snark along the lines of "Hey, this guy is an unknown and why would anyone talk to him?" Aside from the fact that it's often written by people no one else has heard of either, it ignores the fact that lots of solid journalists spend their entire lives working without ever getting to the point where they have a national stage. If anyone had bothered to ask, I would have told them that one of the places I met a lot of federal law enforcement people was during my stint as the managing editor of a then NBC-owned TV station web site in Birmingham, Ala. There were a few stories that brought in scores of federal law enforcement folks to town, including the trial of Eric Rudolph. Like many other journalists, I keep in touch with sources and you'd be surprised what you learn over the period of years. As for the rest of career, I've done everything from financial news to working a national news desk for a company that ran 70+ local news sites across the U.S.
This piece also argued, "Hey, where are all the follow-up pieces?" I hesitate to be snarky, but seriously, stories like this play out over a period of weeks and sometimes even months. If I wanted to just post theories or unsourced material, I could writing about this every day. You will hear more about this--from me and from other probably better-known reporters--but it's a complex story that deserves a solid block of reporting. A few days without breaking news doesn't mean the story is wrong. If anything, it means there is lot here to digest and confirm.
I don't mind the criticism, but when it comes in pieces that don't offer anything other than opinion and some links to other pieces, I can't take it too seriously. The Crooks & Liars piece (like lots of other things being written) relies on the "well it doesn't make common sense" argument. The problem is that argument only works if you know all the facts.
I'm not going to wade into this again, because otherwise I'll never get any work done. We'll just let the events of the next few months play out and see who's right.
UPDATE: Sunday 2:00 p.m. CT. Seriously, this is why I should have learned my lesson and not bothered to engage back-and-forth with some critics. I was bombarded with people sending me this link today, which argues that I'm wrong about some basic facts in the piece above. For instance, as to whether or not the Birmingham station I worked at was owned by NBC:
The tv station website he claims to have been "managing editor" for was never owned by NBC, for example. It was affiliated with NBC, but someone in that business for a long time should understand the difference. The domain was registered to NBC, of course, but that is because it had NBC in the title, and NBC uses an IP protection service to administer them. But the station itself was never owned by NBC. Also, "managing editor" is usually the title given to a lead anchor. It's difficult to believe Ellis carried that title at the station's website. I'm not saying he's lying, but again; what he says creates more questions than it answers.
This was part of my point in the piece above. Some of these "questions" would be answered if anyone bothered to do the slightest bit of actual research or old-fashioned reporting, rather than just grabbing something they see online and running with it.
NBC13 was owned by NBC for about ten years, as a quick call to the station (or even a check of Wikipedia) would have confirmed. As for my title, the "difficult to believe" argument also fits into my original point. Just because it doesn't sound right to you doesn't mean it's not true. Managing Editor was the typical title for the person heading the NBC web sites (at least when I was working there). It could still be, for all I know. It doesn't matter enough to me to check.
But this is the last back-and-forth I'm engaging in on this. I'll let the stories as they play out in the future talk for me. I'm just a journalist working on this story in his off-hours. So I would rather spend what time I have fowarding the story rather than endlessly answering questions that could have been answered with a bit of research.
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