Setting The Record Straight

Way back in August PutnamEYES.com printed a story entitled My Bias is Showing...Again. In it we revealed that Halburn DELIBERATELY misrepresented that Debra Girimont, a candidate for the House of Delegates, was a sponsor of the Putnam County Tailgate Party when she was merely a participant.PutnamLIES.com knew at the time that Mrs Girimont was not at fault, she was yet another victim of the unscrupulous publisher of PutnumLive.com, Mark Halburn. He was merely using her appearance there as a means to further his own political agenda and satisfy a personal vendetta.

Now the time has come to set the record straight. PutnamLIES.com has obtained a letter which was sent to Halburn by Girimont.

"January 12, 2010

Dear Mark,
After reading your article on candidate filings I felt the necessity to contact you about the article.
Since I declined an interview with you on Monday evening 1/11/2010 the only statement that you should have put in quotes from me is that "I want a better West Virginia".
Your story was written as if you had conducted an interview with me. If you had noted that the quotes you printed were taken directly from my web site, I would not have a problem with what you printed.
I might also add that this is the second time that I have been misrepresented on your web site. The first time being when you printed that I was a sponsor of the Putnam Tailgate Party. When I asked for a printed retraction, you only deleted the statement from the article but did not make it clear to your readers that I never represented myself to you or anyone else as a sponsor of the Tailgate Party.
Therefore, I am asking that you clarify to your readers that what you printed was taken from my web site and not from an interview.
If you wish to ask and print legitimate questions about my campaign, I will accept your questions in writing only and my responses will be in written form.
Sincerely,
Debra Girimont
Candidate for the House of Delegates, 14^th District"

In August we called on Ms. Girimont to demand a correction. It has now become clear that she did just that. Unfortunately, Halburn did not cooperate with that request.
Over a week went by before Halburn quietly changed the wording, but he refused to acknowledge that Ms. Girimont never told him or anyone else that she was a sponsor and no retraction or clarification was ever printed.Then, last week Halburn asked for an interview with her and was turned down. He once again misrepresented the facts and printed quotes that made it appear that he had interviewed Ms. Girimont when he did not. He was forced to change those misleading words in the story.Now, due to these continued gross misrepresentations of the facts, Ms. Girimont will no longer respond to anything but written questions from Halburn and will only respond in kind.

This is one "People's Voice" letter you won't see printed in his Letters to the Publisher.

Ms Girimont, we applaud you for standing up to this bully. A public denunciation from you would have gone a lot farther with your would-be constituents however and demonstrated some leadership against this civic menace.

Had you come to us in the first place this could have been dealt with immediately.

Halburn, we condemn your biased, underhanded, unscrupulous, unethical behavior. These examples show just how low you will go to to make yourself appear to be a legitimate journalist.
Once again you have proven yourself to be the hack we all know you are.