Hiltzik Suspended

There's no schadefreude on my part about Mr. Hiltzik's predicament. What we bloggers thought was laughable, the LAT converted into an offense subject to discipline. Now they can feel morally correct and superior for enforcing their policy against pseudonymity while they still selectively report and slant stories to suit their bias. And Patterico (Patrick Frey) has no reason to feel bad about this. I have seen much more vehement back and forth on just about every site I have visited. I thought that was part of blogging. Everything is picked apart to the smallest detail. What happened to Mr. Hiltzik is the result of the attitude of the LAT and nothing else. I think that, basically, the LAT suits are not ready to blog yet. New York Times vs. Sullivan spoke about a marketplace of ideas. Don't stiffle speech. Let the audience walk from the speaker, argue with the speaker, pick at the speaker's every fault, throw rotten tomatoes at the speaker (well, maybe not the last). I criticized Mr. Hiltzik on my site. I allow open, uncensored, unmoderated comments. He could have come back and criticized my writing, poetry and taste in music if he wished. That is what I expected, not that his editors would silence him.

Allowing a halfwitted far right idiot like Patrick Frey to bamboozle the LA Times shows how far you have fallen now that you've become the AAA farm club for Chicago's best litter-box liner/cage-bottom cover/toilet-paper substitute.

This semi-literate "pontificator" (check his blog name, he thinks it's cool to self-identify that way) has traditionally used anonymity - so long as it only applies to his fellow dwellers in the fever swamps of the far right. For this hypocrite to claim that somehow Michael Hiltzik has done something wrong by doing what the rest of his posters do, demonstrates his complete and total intellectual hypocrisy.

For you idiots to take this moron seriously proves I am right to have dropped my subscription to your litter-box liner when I heard you had done this.

Can anyone in your office find the zipper on their fly with both hands on a clear day with a 3-hour advance notice? I doubt it.

I’m going to add something a bit strange. I hope (and it will probably just remain a hope) that Michael Hiltzik develops... a personal blog.

Maybe not even a political one, although that would be fine too.

If he chooses humility even at this late stage, then confidently moves forward toward advancing his ideas, whatever they may be, he may gain a following for his newfound forthrightness and the fact that he has adequately paid for his transgression. And naturally, with his views, he will have some people who agree with him.

As others have said, at least he’s not guilty of plagiarism.

While he may just choose to shy away from the Internet, I’d encourage him to cinch the saddle tighter and step in it again. He’s not the first person to ever do something stupid on the net (not the first person on this page and not the first person in this comment!). His biggest mistake was doing it while working for the LA Times.

Now that his discipline has been decided and the public has had a chance to form its opinions, he should pick himself up and move forward.

Rush Limbaugh, a man many respect, did his 3-hour radio show today with his normal aplomb and good cheer… then, in a deal worked out between his attorney, Roy Black, and Florida prosecutors, he turned himself in, was arrested and charged with a single count of prescription fraud, was released on bond, and has promised to continue his physician supervised drug addiction treatment regimen for the next 18-months, at which time, prosecutors will drop the charge.

He showed humility after a personal failing and challenge and then he moved forward with confidence. Michael Hiltzik should learn from his intellectual enemy.

Even 99 Percent truth is not good enough. 100 percent or nothing.

I disagreed with Frey lots of times (and I agree with him lots too). Heck, in the above comment thread I linked (if you read the entire thing), I think I creamed him in logic.

Yet that doesn't change the facts. So as they say in the House of Commons, Matt Welch, "Hear, hear."

Tom Cleaver:

For this hypocrite to claim that somehow Michael Hiltzik has done something wrong by doing what the rest of his posters do, demonstrates his complete and total intellectual hypocrisy.

Actually, it demonstrates nothing, except that Tom Cleaver has no clue what the issue is. Hiltzik may have gotten in trouble simply for using a pseudonym, but that was never Patterico's beef, nor anyone else's. It was his dishonest use of a pseudonym to create a virtual echo chamber - exactly the same sin I would be creating myself if I followed up this post with another post under my real name, praising Xrlq for his brilliant insight.

I feel some sympathy for Mr. Hiltzik, but ultimately the Times could not let this pass. I've listened to Mr. Hiltzik debate or attempt to debate. He has trouble dealing with challenges and reacts poorly to them. That's fine for a print media person (I think Mark Twain said something to the effect that you should never argue with anyone who buys their ink by the barrel) who can simply put it on the page--and wait for a few letters to the editor, which can be printed or ignored--the paper's choice. In the cut and thrust of the interactive world that sort of personality and intellectual dishonesty turned it into a credibility problem. Unfortunately the credibility problem was exposed for a good part of the Time's readership to see. The Times had to do something when one of their columnists developed a credibility problem. Mr. Hiltzik has been in trouble before in the Times organization, and I fault the Times's management for selecting Mr. Hiltzik for a blog. He was the wrong choice. Nobody looks particularly good in this mess.

"As somebody noted, that is like an author using a pseudonym to favorably review his own books on Amazon.com."

I ran into this type of situation and can honestly say I passed the "Hiltzik test". I came across my (non-blog) site on Alexa or somewhere like that. The section for reader reviews showed no reviews and it asked if I was familiar with the site and would like to review it. Of course, I was familiar with the site but I declined to review it since I was the author. I was hoping that there would be at least one review there but I wasn't going to do it myself. I knew that was just wrong. Mr. Hiltzik should have known it, too.

I have no beefs with the punishment. But the Times needs to stop confusing the issue. Pseudonymity per se is not dishonest. Misrepresenting oneself is. The Times disingenuously mischaracterizes critics with descriptions like this:

"Over the past few days, some analysts have used this episode to portray the Web as a new frontier for newspapers, saying that it raises fresh and compelling ethical questions."

No, it's the same ethical issue, in a different medium. And the phraseology seems dangerously like what politicians use when they don't want to answer an argument, so they rephrase the issue.

The Times editors seem to have a superstitious fear of mentioning the words "sock puppetry" in their corporate explanations, let alone explaining how it's like a reporter writing laudatory letters to the editor about his stories under an assumed name.

Perhaps if the Times editors participated in pseudonymous blog commentary -- without misrepresenting themselves or discussing the Times -- they'd get a better understanding.

Let the top editors take part in a blog about sports, or history, something non-journalistic where they could interact with others and come to learn about how Internet communities form and grow.

Then after several months, they could write about their experiences. I guarantee the editors would have more personal understanding about this world of the Web, where the quacking lunatics often use harsh language.

        The Times did the right thing in suspending Hiltzik.

        Reporters should be honest.  I can see why Hiltzick might want to comment on various blogs without revealing that he is "Michael Hiltzik, Pulitzer Prize-winning business columnist for the Los Angeles Times.  Concealing your identity on-line isn't necessarily dishonest.

        But to sign some posts on a given website with your own name, and others with psuedonyms, is dishonest.  You pretend to be more than one person, which you are not.  Hiltzik was wrong to do it.

        And the people here who criticize "Patterico," and who try to make this an issue of 'psuedonyms vs. real names,' are also dishonest.

Hiltzik willingly shed his credibility, and for what? To get the satisfaction of delivering some low blows? If he had come to the discussion, such as the one on cable companies, and identified himself as a Times columnist who had researched the issue, I would have thought “great - this is someone who may have a much greater understanding of the issue”. Instead he chose to open with “Boy, are you guys stupid” under a pseudonym. And to the blogger’s credit, he still took Hiltzik’s argument seriously!

Sidebar: Yes Patterico, I know - it’s the sock puppetry, not the pseudonyms.

This whole business makes Hiltzik look cowardly and adolescent. Attitudes like his dripped from the pages of the Times, culminating with the astounding “pseudo-journalists” rant from fromer editor James Carroll. The Times is administering some bitter medicine, but it’s needed if they are to win back subscribers - like me.

I read the LA Times off the rack, and go to the Business section first. Dilbert and Tom Petruno are the draws.

Hiltzik's columns belong in the 'California' section, as they reflect the exact same bias and perspective as George Skelton, Steve Lopez, Patt Morrison, etc. His dishonesty is another question, and tells me all I need to know about his character. What the LA Times decides to finally do about it will also be a display of character.

Bradley J. Fikes wrote:

"But the Times needs to stop confusing the issue. Pseudonymity per se is not dishonest. Misrepresenting oneself is."

Dean Baquet wrote:

"Hiltzik has acknowledged using pseudonyms to post a single comment on his blog on latimes.com and multiple comments elsewhere on the Web that dealt with his column and other issues involving the newspaper."

While you may lament the reluctance to use the phrase "sock puppet," there is nothing unambiguous about the wording: "using pseudonyms to post [...] comments [...] that dealt with his column and other issues involving the newspaper."