Gawker Refuses to Post Correction on WikiLeaks DNS Screw-Up, Trades Threats With Company Asking For Apology

?The last week's political and media hoopla over the latest WikiLeaks document dump has had the internet going nuts. Things got so wild online that Julian Assange's official website spent hours over the span of a few days crashed after a series of DDOS attacks. Amazon.com kicked WikiLeaks off of its servers on Wednesday, PayPal also ended their affiliation and two days later their Domain Name Service provider dropped WikiLeaks as well. The company EveryDNS took a lot of heat for being cowardly in dropping WikiLeaks, but so did the similarly named EasyDNS, which never had anything to do with WikiLeaks. Everyone from GigaOm to the New York Times misidentified EveryDNS as EasyDNS, resulting in a deluge of hate mail and criticism for an uninvolved company. But when the company requested a correction from Gawker, things got ugly with editor Remy Stern threatening a post "explain[ing] to readers why they should avoid doing business with [EasyDNS] at all costs."

The Gawker post in question can be found here and now features no mention of EasyDNS. Instead, the correct company's name (EveryDNS) is used, but the post also features no mention of an updated mistake, typically noted online with a strike-through or an appended correction at the bottom.

Mark Jeftovic of EasyDNS explains in a blog post the huge negative reaction his uninvolved company received due to the proliferation of the incorrect information on the internet.

He also explains that when he contacted Gawker's Stern about fixing the incorrect reference to his company Stern responded via email, "We will fix. You do not get a tweet or correction. Now stop emailing and calling us, please."

Stern tells us that Jeftovic downplayed the nature and frequency of EasyDNS's requests, not only emailing him (and other Gawker staffers) repeatedly, but calling the office "about 20 times" and leaving "numerous" voicemails "demanding" a new post and a tweeted apology, "and if we didn't do it, we'd be sorry."

"We don't respond kindly to threats and intimidation," said Stern to Runnin Scared via email. "And obviously we don't put up new posts to apologize for typos in older posts."

Justifiably upset about the angry emails he was mistakenly receiving for something his company did not do, Jeftovic unfortunately lashes out at all writing online and how it's not "real reporting," an argument we've all heard a thousand times before. In this case, though, he was feeling the very real effects of the "zombie horde" who "mindlessly hit the 'retweet' button and perpetuate bad information."

Still, his request does not sound ridiculous: "Correct your story and issue an apology to us."

But in an interesting twist, Stern was equally pissed about the rash of emails he was receiving criticizing Gawker for shaming an innocent business. When a man claiming to be unaffiliated with EasyDNS sent a sassy email to Stern recommending the editor "re-read some of the basic ethics in journalism," Stern assumed the man worked for EasyDNS too and lashed out at him.

"Don't email us again -- you're clearly an idiot," Stern wrote. The man wrote back, "Emailing again out of spite. Keep up the good journalism," and then Stern was fed up. At 3:22 a.m. he responded:

If you and your moronic colleagues continue to email us, we'll be happy to write about your company's harassment tactics and explain to readers why they should avoid doing business with you at all costs.

The man, identified as Grant in the emails (and Reddit user Telenational), posted the whole exchange on Reddit under the title, "Gawker threaten bad press towards EasyDNS due to Gawker's own f*up with regards to WikiLeaks." He also posted a screenshot of their exchange, which you can see below.

For his part, Stern said the emails posted "don't show the back and forth, their outrageous demands, detail how many times they called the office on Friday." Stern noted that "they continued to email us and harass us all day Friday from various email addresses," though it is possible that after Jeftovic's blog post, readers emailed Gawker independently of the company, as Grant claims to be have done.

Now, based on the vitriol toward Gawker Media in the Reddit thread, the angry emails, like this one, are probably pouring in. The lesson here: maybe Klosterman was right and deleting emails makes everyone sort of stabby. Internet trolls, here on all sides, really are a lot like zombies.

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Rightbloggers on WikiLeaks: Kill Julian Assange, But Not Till We Use His Stuff Against Obama

This weekend we got another fat load of WikiLeaks, based on purloined diplomatic cables to and from the U.S. State Department. As happened when Julian Assange's muckraking endeavor leaked U.S. military data from Iraq earlier this year, conservatives are outraged, and some call, as before, for the expeditious arrest of Assange, or fantasize about his assassination.

Rightbloggers generally take a two-pronged approach to the leaks: They believe the new document dump is an unpardonable breach of U.S. security -- except to the extent that it may be used to denigrate the Obama Administration, it which case they feel it deserves wider dissemination.

It's not as if rightbloggers have been alone in denouncing Wikileaks, as mainstream media outlets from the New York Times on down have attacked Assange from all directions -- while sopping up his revelations on the basis of their newsworthiness.

But that is an old, time-honored form of journalistic hypocrisy: Using hot news to draw readers with one hand, and tut-tutting its shameful provenance with the other. Rightbloggers have added a few new wrinkles to the game.

Back when Assange leaked the Iraq War data, for example, they dismissed the revelations of bad behavior by our Iraqi allies ("they appear to illustrate the inherent -- and forseeable -- problems with the nation-building strategy we pursued in Iraq and are still pursuing in Afghanistan," soothed The American Spectator), and cheerfully plucked the bits that supported their own interests.

The documents suggested to them that a previous, speculative accounting by The Lancet had overestimated real Iraqi casualties of the war, and that the discovery of some old chemical weapons proved that Saddam had WMDs after all. Counter-arguments could be made that The Lancet was measuring different kinds of casualties than the leaked documents addressed, and that the discovered chemical weapons did not constitute a real threat to the United States ("Later investigation revealed those contents to be vitamins"). But for rightbloggers the message was clear: "... the two biggest scoops from the latest document dump are that the infamous Lancet study was bogus, and that WMDs were found in Iraq in quantity."

They apparently thought Assange had made these revelations by accident or out of self-sabotage, as he was of the "Left" and thus was leaking on his own cause. "I delight in the unintended consequence Assange's revelations has produced," said Melanie Morgan. "It seems to be the Left contradicting itself in the propaganda arena," said Right Pundits. "The WikiLeaksters seem to have inadvertently done history a bit of a favor in the their obsession," said NewsBusters, in dispelling "leftist folklore."

None of this altered their feeling that by leaking this info Assange was aiding the enemy, and possible guilty of murder.

"Gosh, isn't it nice that the enemy will be able to identify Iraqis who died by name and whose side they were fighting on, so they can go after their families, either to kill them or recruit them, depending on the circumstances?" said BizzyBlog. "What a guy this Mr. Assange is." "Julian Assange: Jerkoff troop killer," wrote The North Star National.

?National Review's Jonah Goldberg asked, "Why wasn't Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago?" Goldberg asserted that the leaks were "going to get people killed, including brave Iraqis and Afghans who've risked their lives and the lives of their families to help us." Nonetheless, he lamented, "Even if the CIA wanted to take him out, they couldn't without massive controversy. That's because assassinating a hipster Australian Web guru as opposed to a Muslim terrorist is the kind of controversy no official dares invite."

(Goldberg tried to hop out of his own overheated logic train at the end -- "Ultimately, I don't expect the U.S. government to kill Assange, but I do expect them to try to stop him" -- and complained, when called out on his homicidal fantasy, that "there's nothing in the quote at Balloon Juice to justify the claim I call for [Assange's] murder." To shore up his position, he challenged a writer at Gawker to a fistfight.)

Last weekend the diplomatic leaks was released, and with them came the usual calls for Assange's death and/or detention. "Julian Assange, Why is He Still Breathing?" asked Paladin's Page. "Assange should be looking at the inside of a container on a ship doing lazy racetracks around the Indian Ocean," said Blackfive. "I won't think twice if Julian Assange meets the cold blade of an assassin," said Donald Douglas. Etc.

The Obama Administration denounced the leaks but, having not the stones to send a cold-bladed assassin to preempt Assange, failed to prevent them, which rightbloggers declared proof of the Kenyan Pretender's malfeasance or worse.

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Wikileaks' Latest Lands First Via Twitter, Followed By New York Times and Guardian

?Wikileaks planned their latest document dump -- consisting mostly of "cables," or candid behind-the-scenes diplomatic messages between the United States and its allies -- for late on Sunday afternoon, but as anyone on in the internet knows, everything happens early here. The leakers were hit by a leak this morning when copies of the German news magazine Der Spiegel hit newsstands early, and eager buyers began tweeting excerpts from the findings. Simultaneously, Wikileaks reported that they were "under a mass distributed denial of service attack" and their website was down. Likely as a result, the New York Times and the Guardian let their reports fly. A scattered breakdown so far of a hectic news afternoon is below:

The Times report comes in the form of a piece entitled "Cables Shine Light Into Secret Diplomatic Channels," which bullet-points notable moments from the cables and explains that the leaks provide "an unprecedented look at backroom bargaining by embassies around the world, brutally candid views of foreign leaders and frank assessments of nuclear and terrorist threats."

For example, here is the Times on the U.S.'s Guantanamo bargaining:

? Bargaining to empty the Guantánamo Bay prison: When American diplomats pressed other countries to resettle detainees, they became reluctant players in a State Department version of "Let's Make a Deal." Slovenia was told to take a prisoner if it wanted to meet with President Obama, while the island nation of Kiribati was offered incentives worth millions of dollars to take in a group of detainees, cables from diplomats recounted. The Americans, meanwhile, suggested that accepting more prisoners would be "a low-cost way for Belgium to attain prominence in Europe."

The Times praises even the Wikileaks information that was not classified or entirely unknown writing, "Even when they recount events that are already known, the cables offer remarkable details."

The report also comes with "A Note to Readers" about the decision to publish the leaks:

But the more important reason to publish these articles is that the cables tell the unvarnished story of how the government makes its biggest decisions, the decisions that cost the country most heavily in lives and money. They shed light on the motivations -- and, in some cases, duplicity -- of allies on the receiving end of American courtship and foreign aid. They illuminate the diplomacy surrounding two current wars and several countries, like Pakistan and Yemen, where American military involvement is growing. As daunting as it is to publish such material over official objections, it would be presumptuous to conclude that Americans have no right to know what is being done in their name.

The Times reveals that they sent the Obama administration the cables they were planning to publish with redactions to protect national security. The administration then suggested additional redactions, to which the newspaper "agreed to some, but not all." The Times series is titled "State's Secrets" and is teased as a nine-day roll-out.

The Guardian, meanwhile, makes an interactive feature of "The U.S. emmbassy cables," including a database searchable by originating country and countries referenced in the cables.

The Times' own interactive document viewer can be accessed here.

The Guardian also explains how the leak came to be: "From a fake Lady Gaga CD to a thumb drive that is a pocket-sized bombshell."

Der Spiegel calls the disclosure "nothing short of a political meltdown for US foreign policy."

The Pentagon calls the leaks a "reckless disclosure of classified information illegally obtained," with Press Secretary Robert Gibbs saying, "We condemn in the strongest terms the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information."

Expect much more of this madness as experts and concerned citizens continue to comb through this mass of information.

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