Read the link again. It says "SUGGEST removal." The final decision to remove a comment is made ONLY by network administrators and ONLY if the comment violates the Web site's Terms of Service.
Your complaints about the journalistic integrity of this blog is again well off-base. What you see as blogging "for" the candidates is a basic fundamental of reporting news - publicizing a complaint of alleged wringdoing. The other fundamental is getting the other side of the story - which we would if anyone from Gillibrand's team responded to our requests for comment.
Obviously, your understanding of journalistic principles and mine seem to be quite different. With 20 years of experience in the business, I can assure you that we are doing nothing more than many other newspapers and newspaper Web sites are doing across the country.
And as the online editor for DailyGazette.com, I can ensure you that we strive for the same fair coverage on the Web site that we provide in the newspaper (hence, we equally publicize complaints by Democratic AND Republican candidates).
Oh, and by the way, should I question YOUR motives when the only time you've been critical of this blog is when we publicize complaints against Democratic candidates. Where were you when we were seemingly critical of Republican George Amedore's appearance before the Schenectady City Council or promoting endorsements of Democratic candidates Paul Tonko, Mark Blanchfield, Terry O'Neill and David Soares.
What it all boils down to is the age-old critique of the media: People on the left think the media leans to the right, while people on the right think the media leans to the left. And what that tells me is that we in the media are right where we belong, in the middle, ticking off both sides of the aisle.
I'm wondering if my idea of "impartial" is a little different (read: not as far to the left) from yours.
No, Darrell, according to our Terms of Service - which you can view by clicking the link at the bottom of any page - you cannot use our Web site to solicit donations. If you want to complain about the LEGacy Project or the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, feel free, but you can not solicit readers to donate to your group.
While part of the reason is that it does not make good business sense to give away advertising, it is also a question of preserving the reputation of our newspaper and web site. While you may find fault with these two groups, we can at least vouch for their legitimacy, while we have no way of knowing if your group is legit or a scam to take people's money.
And Grant, I will say AGAIN that our reporters are not blogging "on behalf" of anybody ... They are blogging when they get some information they consider newsworthy but for which we don't have the room in our print edition ... If you read both items you commented on, you will see that they are about issues brought up by one campaign and that we went out and got a response from the other candidate and did some of our own reporting to detarmine if the claims had any validity.
I hardly see how determining the truth of a candidate's claims is reporting "on behalf" of anybody unless it's your candidate that got caught in a lie.
Would you rather we just let candidates say whatever the hell they want without checking the veracity of their claims???
Posted on November 9 at 11:30 a.m. (Suggest removal)
David, my mistake. I hit the wrong checkbox when I was monitoring comments this morning.
On Link to us