If there was a Jayson Blair Award for Journalism, this would be a worthy candidate:
http://www.ucimc.org/node/1232&hidden=1
On April 9 at 11:01 AM, Brian Dolinar came up with this gem:
10 days and we still have no police reports for what happened on March 30 in Douglass Park.
If this is a simply case of a youth resisting authority, why has it taken 10 days to get the story straight?
Just to keep the facts clear, what I have heard is that the cop who stopped the 17 year old youth and the cop who pepper sprayed him were two different people.
The cop who made the stop was Andre Davis, an African American officer. The one who used pepper spray was a female officer.
The victim said he was also beaten. He still had cuts and bruises at the Tuesday night city council meeting. He says there were a total of 4 officers who assaulted him.
Gina Jackson told me Andre Davis was sitting in the circular parking lot in front of the Douglass gymnasium. He saw the three youth walking on the grass, but did not see them coming from the gym. They were not loitering. Gina seemed to say that Davis was not paying attention to see the three youth come out of the gym.
Gina told me Andre Davis is a "pea brain."
Funny thing that hasn't run in the media.
BD
I've personally talked with Gina Jackson, and I found it hard to believe that she'd really say something like that to Brian Dolinar. So why would the mainstream media not run a story like that? Maybe it has something to do with fabrication being a no-no, but that's just my guess.
So at 2:48 pm on April 12, someone reponded:
Well folks, another example of Dolinar's extreme bias and propensity to lie just to embellish his agenda. Gina did not make that quote. Ask her. So what else is he lying about on this site?
Now quicky hide this ML. It might violate the editors policy on truthfulness.
Sho nuff, it was hidden as being "off-topic."
At 4:35 pm on April 12, the person tried again, but in a more restrained style:
Since you deleted my other post, how about this one.
BD asserted that according to Gina Jackson the African American Officer at the Champaign Police Dept. has a subnormal size brain. Clearly indicating that, according to BD, the officer was not capable of forming a reasonable response to the youth walking in the park after dusk. However, this premise is disputed by Ms. Jackson as a clear fabrication by the reporter, Brian Dolinar. Again, ask her.
ML hides that too, on the grounds that it's "off-topic" and adds, "BTW, your anonymous 'correction' is just not credible in this context; I'm sure if Ms. Jackson had an issue with the reporting, she would get hold of BD and he would correct it."
Huh? How can disputing the factual accuracy of a story be "off-topic?" Only at UCIMC, I guess. At this point, I almost wish that Gina Jackson would "get ahold" of BD by serving him with a libel suit, but it's probably not worth her while to do so.
Update (4/15/2007): I talked with Gina Jackson tonight. She confirmed that she had not called Andre Davis a "pea brain," and pointed out that Dolinar's claims didn't even make much sense.
Found this on UCIMC:
http://www.ucimc.org/node/1277
I converted the screenshot to JPG before anyone could take it down.
It's a little mean, but it's pretty darn funny.
Oh, I thought that was brilliant, but yeah, it'll probably come down soon.
Heh.
And it got hidden. ML said, "It is trolling, but also an impersonation." (Huh? How can an anonymous post be an "impersonation?")
www.ucimc.org/hidden
Don't neglect Brian's political endorsements for the Champaign City Council, followed by one of those pesky anonymous comments
:
http://www.ucimc.org/node/1232&hidden=1
Two weeks
Two weeks later, what happened on March 30th still has not been explained. Police have not finished the investigation or released police reports to the public. At least one candidate for city council has made this incident an issue. I suspect the police investigation will be stalled until after the April 17 elections. Only if Champaign residents cast their vote for Giraldo Rosales, Patricia Avery, and Annette Williams, will we ever see a Citizen Police Review Board in Champaign.
Political endorsement
If you're endorsing political candidates, how do we know that your journalism is not biased?
This one's even more blatant: www.ucimc.org/node/1126
And yes, UCIMC is apparently a 501c(3) organization that's not supposed to be involved in electioneering.
"Only if Champaign residents cast their vote for Giraldo Rosales, Patricia Avery, and Annette Williams, will we ever see a Citizen Police Review Board in Champaign."
This statement by BD, in and of itself, doesn't rise to the level of electioneering or an endorsement.
The thread that wayward links, does, however.
How bout this one? It's hard to spin hard numbers, even if you strait up lie.
http://www.ucimc.org/node/1278
"...the project’s initial findings quickly discovered that jury pools in Champaign County did not reflect the County’s demographics. African-Americans rarely serve on juries in this county, representing only 6% of the jury pools despite making up 15% of the population in Champaign-Urbana. African-Americans are 53% of the defendants in local criminal cases." - original post
"Again, the African American population in Champaign County is 15%" - BD's followup comment.
"...the jury pool for the Champaign County Court is drawn from, surprise-surprise, Champaign County, not Champaign-Urbana, as stated in the article. Champaign County is almost exactly 11% black....the difference between percentage of black jurors being 6% (which I have to take from the word of the author) and 11% black in the county vs 15% in the county is a VERY significant change. There's still a disparity, but it's quite a bit different that what the article claims, given the very small percentages we're working with for jurors." -Selection from my comments after running the county demographics from Census through GIS.
Whoa, Wayward, I just came across this! I know that you're not too concerned about it, but it looks like ML is cloning himself. So much for due process...
That's unfortunate. wayward was one of the few voices of reason in control over there. Now the editorial staff is completely unchecked with how far out of reality they might go.
Good intentions, I think, for all of them, but I seriously question the methods and reasoning over there at times.
Thanks for the support, but it's really not that big a deal. As I said, I've pretty much left UCIMC already, and I hadn't even posted there for about a week (let alone done any "editing"). The post claiming that Gina Jackson had called the officer a "pea-brain" made me angry because I know and respect Gina. It's very hard for me to believe that she'd say something like that, especially to Brian Dolinar. When I saw anonymous responses that disputed BD's statements hidden as "off-topic," I was disgusted. So in the end, it's probably better not to be linked to this in any way, including "editorial privileges." Oh yeah, these "editorial privileges" mostly consisted of the ability to remove spam posts, so I'm pretty sure that life will go on. :)
Whoa, Wayward, I just came across this! I know that you're not too concerned about it, but it looks like ML is cloning himself. So much for due process...
Errr... I think it would be safe to say that ML, Dolinar, and Gehrig have far more in common with each other than any of them do with me. On the positive side, there should probably be fewer disputes about editorial policy on the UCIMC website.
Why does the word "Stalinist" keep floating to the front of my consciousness like a noxious earworm?
"Why does the word "Stalinist" keep floating to the front of my consciousness like a noxious earworm?"
I know I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying it, LOL :-).
Wayward, this is what happens when you don't believe in the actively white supremacist criminal justice system and the presence of death squads set on silencing Mr. Lehman's truth.
Time for me to go shave and play with my HO locomotives!
Hmmm... I'd thought more in terms of extremism in general. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremism)
Wikipedia had a list of a researcher Laird Wilcox's characteristics of an extremist group:
1. Character assassination
2. Name calling and labeling
3. Irresponsible sweeping generalizations
4. Inadequate proof for assertions
5. Advocacy of double standards
6. View of opponents and critics as essentially evil
7. Manichean (bipolar) world view
8. Advocate some degree of censorship and repression of their opponents and critics
9. Identify themselves in terms of who their enemies are
10. Tendency toward arguments by intimidation
11. Widely use slogans, buzzwords and thought-terminating clichés
12. Claim some kind of moral or other superiority over others
13. Doomsday thinking
14. Tendency to believe that it is justified to do bad things in the service of a supposedly "good" cause
15. Emphasis on emotional response, as opposed to reasoning and logical analysis
16. Hypersensitivity and vigilance
17. May claim some kind of supernatural, mystical or divinely-inspired rationale for their beliefs and actions
18. Inability to tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty
19. Groupthink
20. Personalization of hostility
21. Assumption that the system is defective if they don't win
Wayward, this is what happens when you don't believe in the actively white supremacist criminal justice system and the presence of death squads set on silencing Mr. Lehman's truth.
"I'm not a witch, I'm not a witch!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrzMhU_4m-g
Wayward, I was thinking more along the lines of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W10KaeeTpc8
watched the youtube clip thought police....holy crap that guy needs some medication. it gets really good at about the 3min 15sec mark. wow
HG
Now some guy's over there disputing with me whether or not COUNTY courts should draw its jury from a pool of the COUNTY.
So much fun.
Yeah, I went over and took a look at that discussion. It seems to be about par for the course.
One of the things that made me uneasy about the practice of hiding posts that editors didn't like was that it seemed to make UCIMC something other than an open publishing newswire. If only spam and hate speech were removed, that would be one thing, but there seemed to be a far greater degree of editorial control. Couldn't one then assume that the editors approved of the articles and posts that had not been hidden?
It's actually a relief to no longer be an "editor," because I was starting to feel pretty exposed. If a UCIMC article ever led to a lawsuit, could the editors be dragged into it along with the author? In fact, the idea of having my name linked to some of the material on the site was making me uneasy. So I think that this is really for the best.
Update: Tonight, I personally talked with Gina Jackson. She confirmed that she had not called Andre Davis a "pea brain," and pointed out that Dolinar's claims don't even make much sense. Unfortunately, this isn't the first implausible quote that Brian Dolinar has attributed to an official; Julia Rietz has told me that he's also lied about her. Sheriff Walsh doesn't seem to be too impressed either. At this point in time, I'm inclined to believe Jackson, Rietz, and Walsh over Dolinar, ML, and Gehrig.
I crossposted your update to UCIMC. I'm sure they won't hide THAT. What's your take on Kirchner's comments? Lawyers are usually more discreet than that...
I can't believe they hid it, ha ha ha! ML said that it was off-topic, even though it goes directly to the point of BD's writings. I guess that facts that contradict BD's account are unacceptable to ML.
"I can't believe they hid it, ha ha ha! ML said that it was off-topic, even though it goes directly to the point of BD's writings."
This is a great example of what I mean by the UCIMC not living up to its potential.
Whatever credibility they've earned is being wasted by stupid stunts like this.
Why have comments at all if you're not going to allow commenters to directly challenge errors made by authors?
Wow, this response from ML (www.ucimc.org/node/1232#comment-1638) is just mind-blowing:
A Note on Corrections
Corrections are an important part of any journalistic endeavor. They deal specifically with disputed facts. They should be clearly distinguishable from comments that are merely unhappy with other elements of the reporting in question.
Corrections typically come about in two ways. A source may contact the original author and ask for the author to post a correction. Or the person who feels they are misquoted may post a clarification themselves. In either case, we'd be glad to post a correction here, if one is necessary.
Comments from anonymous sources posted as "corrections" in an open publishing environment, especially those that involve crossposting and various unrelated editorial comments, are likely to be regarded as "off-topic."
Well, if that's their policy, they're going to lose whatever credibility they have, and fast.
Why do they even bother having comments at all?
"I do the best to check my facts. This is what distinguishes indypendent media from IP bullshit." -- Brian Dolinar, April 16, 2007
""I do the best to check my facts. This is what distinguishes indypendent media from IP bullshit." -- Brian Dolinar, April 16, 2007"
Link, please.
I need a screen cap.
It's toward the bottom of www.ucimc.org/node/1232&hidden=1 in the "No corrections" comment. There were also a couple of interesting posts above it. (Now I want a T-shirt that says, "Ax grinder!" It could be sort of like a punk rock fashion statement.)
ETA: Here's an interesting paragraph in that post.
I am willing to make corrections in my reporting and did so when the State's Attorney informed my colleagues at court watch of one of our mistaken assertions in the Hjort case.
(That still doesn't exempt her, Difanis, and Dedman ffrom botching the Hjort case.)
Oh really? Rietz recused herself from the case since she had a conflict of interest. Judge Difanis appointed Dedman as special prosecutor, and Dedman chose not to press charges. So how exactly did Rietz "botch" the case? Inquiring minds want to know.
And another one:
And we are still wondering WHAT happened Friday night, March 30th?
Still no police reports have been released.
OK, WHY would the police release reports about an incident involving a juvenile to Dolinar? If the kid is formally charged, then the defense attorney would be entitled to the reports. However, an Illinois court recently ruled that the police reports were supposed to remain in the custody of the attorney. So the defense attorney isn't even supposed to give a copy to the client, let alone Dolinar.
There we go.
He can say what he wants about my factual accuracy, but when I get something wrong, I don't start deleting comments to hide that fact - I print a correction and apology, prominently, and leave the comments open for whatever.
I shouldn't let his cheap shots bother me, but what little credibility I have has been earned. What little credibility IMC has is rapidly being squandered - and that's disappointing to me, as I think there's so much potential for IMC in this town.
As I told someone earlier today, the expectations are that IMC would be the open-minded, let's-discuss-anything hippies, and that IP.com would be the close-minded, dogmatic dictatorship. Somehow roles have reversed, and I'm awfully proud of our openness and willingness to be contradicted by anyone at any time on any subject. That's what comments are for, after all. If you're just going to moderate the crap out of them so that every comment reinforces the author's point-of-view, then they should just turn off their comments.
what is up with throwing "y"s into words to replace vowels?
IT'S ***SOMETIMES**** -Y-!!!!!
"Y" can be a vowel too if it wants! All those other vowels: so uppity, so working for the system; I bet no Champaign cop would ever stop an "O" or a "U" walking in consonant-ville!
BUT, you know what? It doesn't matter, because Y can ALSO be consonant! It can be whatever it wants to be, and its not going to let THE MAN put it down!!!!
Stupid, arrogant A, E, I, O and U...they've had everything from the beginning, they should be ASHAMED!
"Y" had to WORK for everything HE had; in fact, those OTHER so-called "vowels" ought to be giving half of their money to "Y"!!!
Fascist vowels...
very clever, james
Nice.
I'm assuming that's a joke, and that the conspiracy stuff hasn't rubbed off on you!
Here's a classy piece about the Patrick Thompson trial and appeal. archive.ucimc.org/feature/display/130461
Because clearly if a woman with an imperfect life accuses an activist of sexual abuse, there must be a massive conspiracy involved.
But the worst part was probably in one of his comments below the article:
Biased? You think? And I'm sure that nobody would mistake all the posts about the alleged victim's personal life for character assassination. I talked with Julia Rietz about what Dolinar had said about the woman's demeanor after the hearing, and this was her response:
"He blatantly lied about the young woman in the Thompson case in a thread where he claimed that after a hearing she left out the front door of the courthouse, laughing and jeering at the Thompson supporters who were in a prayer circle in the front courtyard. In fact, she was crying in the lobby, and a court officer let her leave out the back door of the courthouse."
Gosh, how could anyone possibly doubt Dolinar's veracity?
Ah, and we also have this stinky journalistic suppository entitled "No Weapon Can Replace Good Police Work" at www.ucimc.org/node/911&hidden=1
OK... so since police officers are in a union, they're paid to be human punching bags? Seriously, what if someone tried telling Dolinar that activists may have to "take a punch" and "it goes with the turf?" (Gotta watch out for those IP knuckle-draggers, you know.)
hehehe....
I'm having a blast watching the back-and-forth sniping between here and UCIMC. To any and all reading this: if you haven't been over there recently, you really need to in order to see the whole conversation unfold.
I know we're all acting like children about this, and I know at the center of this firestorm is simply wayward's sudden converstion to being "one of them"- but its so much dirty, adolescent fun!
For all you Family Guy fans, this one's for Wayward:
(*in a low, slow, sinister voice*)
"...something...something...something...Dark Side."
"...something...something...something...Complete!"
Should I be alarmed that my eyes are now yellow and I've started calling myself "Darth Wayward?"
Seriously, it was neither sudden, nor is it a completely black-and-white situation. I've been uncomfortable with some of the stuff I've seen for a while, and it hit a breaking point more recently. But at the same time, I've also met some very fine people through UCIMC and exchanged email this morning with one of them. Some of the nicer people associated with UCIMC and AWARE are quieter, and you haven't seen them posting on some of the threads in question. But they're definitely there, and they have some very worthwhile things to say.
A few things:
1) I have no interest in reading the threads in question, but if you are quoting fairly, the guy looks like a prick to me.
2)If you are going to diss UCIMC.org, I know it's a drag, but would it be possible to come up with a name that distinguishes it from the UCIMC? The place itself is great and really an amazing community hub. I have had the pleasure of attending a number of meetings there, and my best friends had a birthday party there. It's really a beautiful space. I think the books for prisoners and other completely 100% awesome programs run out of there too.
3) James: the jury selection issues are extremely serious and need to be addressed immediately if we are to have any semblance of "jury by peers". I know, "color-blind" and blahblahblah, but given the current statistics on trust in police eyewitness testimony and race, it's clearly still vital in criminal case moderations. I don't agree with any of Dolinar's quoted arguments, but the arguments that indict our criminal justice system are still pretty serious.
4)OK... so since police officers are in a union, they're paid to be human punching bags? Seriously, what if someone tried telling Dolinar that activists may have to "take a punch" and "it goes with the turf?" (Gotta watch out for those IP knuckle-draggers, you know.)
I have no idea what Dolinar would say, nor do I care, but anyone mildly acquainted with progressive movements in most societies would know that many activists have done what they've done knowing that they may have to "take a punch" and "it goes with the turf", or in some cases, braved far more. I think it quite likely that Malcolm, MLK, the Maribal sisters and others knew they would certainly die for their cause and yet they chose to fight for others.
I certainly hope that police officers knowingly choose a profession that they may very well have to die to protect others in society. When I was investigating that career path, it was certainly my understanding.
1) I have no interest in reading the threads in question, but if you are quoting fairly, the guy looks like a prick to me.
I'd best not comment on that one.
2)If you are going to diss UCIMC.org, I know it's a drag, but would it be possible to come up with a name that distinguishes it from the UCIMC? The place itself is great and really an amazing community hub. I have had the pleasure of attending a number of meetings there, and my best friends had a birthday party there. It's really a beautiful space. I think the books for prisoners and other completely 100% awesome programs run out of there too.
Yes, I agree that the Books to Prisoners project is a good thing, and there are also other positive things about UCIMC as an organization.
I have no idea what Dolinar would say, nor do I care, but anyone mildly acquainted with progressive movements in most societies would know that many activists have done what they've done knowing that they may have to "take a punch" and "it goes with the turf", or in some cases, braved far more. I think it quite likely that Malcolm, MLK, the Maribal sisters and others knew they would certainly die for their cause and yet they chose to fight for others.
Yes, and I greatly respect such activists.
"If you are going to diss UCIMC.org, I know it's a drag, but would it be possible to come up with a name that distinguishes it from the UCIMC? The place itself is great and really an amazing community hub. I have had the pleasure of attending a number of meetings there, and my best friends had a birthday party there. It's really a beautiful space. I think the books for prisoners and other completely 100% awesome programs run out of there too."
That's fair - I prefer people make the same distinction between this site (IP.com) and my online identity (IP), although I feel like a nitpicker every time I mention it.
I'll try to be more careful in the future.
"1) I have no interest in reading the threads in question, but if you are quoting fairly, the guy looks like a prick to me.
3) James: the jury selection issues are extremely serious and need to be addressed immediately if we are to have any semblance of "jury by peers". I know, "color-blind" and blahblahblah, but given the current statistics on trust in police eyewitness testimony and race, it's clearly still vital in criminal case moderations. I don't agree with any of Dolinar's quoted arguments, but the arguments that indict our criminal justice system are still pretty serious."
Um, xian, you need to read the threads in question on UCIMC to see just how serious I've taken it. I've put quite a bit (too much, in fact) of effort into looking at jury selection from a scientific, mathematical standpoint. I said nothing about "colorblind," I've only looked at the Champaign County situation from a GIS/Census perspective.