Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!ucbvax!husc6!bloom-beacon!athena.mit.edu!sethg
From: sethg@athena.mit.edu (Seth Gordon)
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: _Boston Herald_ article on JEDR/Templeton case
Message-ID: <8304@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Date: 5 Dec 88 00:13:56 GMT
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: sethg@athena.mit.edu (Seth Gordon)
Organization: Thoughtcrime Associates: Miniluv Rm 101, London, Oceania
Lines: 54

The _Boston Herald_ of 12/4/88, page 2, contains an article on the
JEDR/Templeton case.  JEDR, who has decided not to post to the net for a
while, would like you all to know that it contains errors, and given
some of the things it says, I agree.

JEDR's comments:

1) The word "legal" in para. 2 should be "legitimate."

2) Para. 3: "Richmond... [is getting help from FBI et al. to] get a
computer network called USENET either censored or off the air."  He
didn't call for either.  "USENET has many valuable aspects & must be
differentiated from one small part of it," he says (here, now, sitting
next to me).  He did not use the word "censorship" at any time.

3) Para. 8: "he turned on his computer on Nov. 8..." Wrong; he did not
say that the "six million" joke, referred to in this paragraph, appeared
on Nov. 8.

4) Numerous factual errors.

JEDR is trying to clear this up with Herald management.

My own comment: I am firmly astride the fence on this issue (were I
Templeton, I wouldn't post racist jokes, but I suppose he has every
right to), but I know JEDR personally, and I will vouch for his
integrity.  If he says he was misquoted, I believe him.  

The article also refers to his actions as "a one-man campaign."  What
are Nancy Gould and David Makowsky, chopped liver?  Furthermore,
mightn't the original print article, in the Kitchener _Waterloo-Record,_
have been prompted by a *Canadian,* not by the eevil Spirit of Richmond
that doth corrode the grand anarchic traditions of the net?

Furthermore, the _Boston Herald_ is (or, until very recently, was) owned
by Rupert Murdoch, whose reputation for journalistic integrity, or lack
thereof, is well-known.

Whatever JEDR has done in the past, the story is clearly now on the
wire, and how far it spreads is out of his control.

JEDR's current position, I believe, is: he doesn't want to deprive
anyone of their Constitutional rights, but Templeton et al. should use
better judgement, like the editor of a newspaper would, to exclude
overtly racist comments.

Flames on Grand Issues of Free Speech and All That Bullshit go in
/dev/null.  Please.  I doubt much of this "debate" has convinced anyone
of anything.

-- 
"Some people get results, I get consequences." --Jimmy Durante
: bloom-beacon!athena.mit.edu!sethg / standard disclaimer
: Seth Gordon / MIT Brnch., PO Box 53, Cambridge, MA 02139