8/19/2008 7:28:00 PM
Some give the whole industry a black eye
The proprietor of one of our online news competitors was recently arrested at the county pool in Eleanor after making an ass out of himself in public.
Mark Hallburn, who runs the Web site www.PutnumLive.com, was arrested last week after he intimidated a pool manager, got into the pool, and refused to leave because he claimed the pool was supposed to be open until 6 p.m., about two hours later, according to a criminal complaint.
Hallburn claims he is being harassed by the city of Hurricane and Putnam County as a whole on his Web site.
Hallburn has reportedly frequently disrupted city council meetings and other functions with similar shenanigans, an overly-aggressive attitude, and the willingness to stretch any little thing as far as he can to make whatever point he is trying to make.
While Hallburn has every right to voice his opinion and battle whichever government agency he sees fit, we wish it wasn't being done under the guise of news.
Many people don't understand how news organizations work and may not understand that just because someone calls themselves a news agency does not necessarily mean they are credible.
In this case, the antics of Hallburn discredit his credibility as a news agency and gives the business as a whole a bad name.
When one starts a news site with the intentions of harassing public officials for personal gain, it becomes problematic. For example, his frequent complaints on his Web site about the noise near his home.
We applaud anyone who challenges the status quo when it is a wrong being committed against the community or the population as a whole. But when the wrong is one that only one person with a pen cares about, it hardly fits the bill as news or a good cause for an alleged news agency to tackle.
While finding true neutrality in news reporting is nearly impossible because reporters gather information, interpret it, and write about it, we feel that striving for such neutrality and forgetting about our own personal issues is a good start.
When a reporter enters a place where he or she was told not to go, it is wrong.
There are established channels to file complaints about pool closings, noisy construction, and other issues. Writing about it repeatedly, attacking public officials over it, and going to such lengths as allegedly assaulting pool managers is not among the channels.
We are at the crest of a wave of change in the news business.
More and more people go to the Internet for their news source.
Unfortunately, operations like this one, and some of the many blogs that are making noise, have very little in common with what we have seen in the print media since its inception.
More and more of our news are coming with opinion attached that is not clearly labeled as opinion. The thin line between opinion and fact is often hard to disseminate.
We just urge everyone to look at news critically and think about the sources used in news stories to determine how much of it you believe.
Reporting the proper source is everything.
When stories appear without sources, or with questionable sources, it is a safe bet that the facts being presented could be questionable themselves.
Our own industry needs to make sure it doesn't fall into the same traps that many on the Internet have.
Our credibility depends on it.
Those people in Charge of the proceedings in the Court Romm yesterday who allowed Mark Halburn to tell Judge Watkins to turn around and look at Him when he made his comments to Judge Watkins should be ashamed for letting Halburn get away with that. As is normal his comments were rude, crude and unacceptable.
ReplyDeleteThe West Virginia Supreme Court has lost all credibility with the people that know who and what Mark Hallburn is. Their caving into the rantings and ravings of five lunatics and allowing them to attack an elected official and his family have shown what cowards are working there. Why did they allow two of the lowest lifeforms attack anyone, much less an elected official. The people that allowed this to happen should be dismissed as incompetent to work within the legal system!!! Get someone to work for the WV Justices to stand up and refuse to allow these antics to continue!
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