The whole point of free speech is not to make ideas exempt from criticism but to expose them to it.

Monday, January 30, 2012

Rapid City Journal posts fake discussion

At 10 AM today, Holly Meyer at the Rapid City Journal moderated a fake discussion online. The blurb for the "discussion" was:
Join us for a chat about synthetic drugs with Rapid City Police Department Senior Officer Paul Wathen. Wathen, a certified drug recognition expert [licensed to practice voodoo], will field your questions live.
I asked this question three times: "Perhaps if natural cannabis were legal, use of synthetics would diminish?"

Three times it appeared momentarily, then disappeared. That leads me to believe that Ms. Meyer is simply a front for the illegal drug pushers. She certainly didn't want a real discussion.

Update 31 Jan: I emailed the Journal, asking why. According to Justin Breen, Interim Editor, Holly claims she did not delete my question, which means that it was someone else (doubtful) or a cyberconnection mechanical failure (possible). That does not change my opinion of Ms. Meyer's agenda. She constantly fawns over copstuff in the Journal.

4 comments:

Wayne Gilbert said...

I think it is important to know whether the Journal intentionally or inadvertently deleted your question. For the moment, however, it is important to know Senior Detective (sometimes Senior means elevated in rank--sometimes it just means old) Walthen's reponse to the question. It seems to me that a news reporter would call Walthen, get an answer, and publish it.

Bob Newland said...

Breen says that he doesn't know why my comments would not appear. I guess that puts it in the realm of "inadvertent."

For 20 years, local news reporters have consistently been hostile to any suggestion that they question drug policy at any level.

Woster pretends to question policy sometimes, but when I gave him hard evidence that Brenner's office systematically extorts fines from innocent people, he would not pursue it.

chad sechsington said...

every question made by a person attending those chat sessions is run through a human moderator, make no mistake. i noticed this back when i attended another chat session with the new director of the main street square. i'd post my questions, but sometimes instead of my question, the moderator would paraphrase what i'd written, which set my shenanigan-sense tingling.

without a doubt, your question was being deliberately ignored.

so technically speaking, the "cyberconnection failure" on the RCJ site can be accurately traced to the area between the keyboard and chair.

Bob Newland said...

Not only ignored, but withdrawn from the discussion, if your scenario is correct.

Breen told me that he believes Meyer, because "she's on our staff."

In my case, I saw my question appear on the screen in the succession of comments/questions. It remained there for about three seconds, then it disappeared.