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David Edwards · site administrator Joined: 26 Jan 2004 Posts: 162

In response to this tweet: https://twitter.com/MediaLensWipe/status/266694104300257280

Does your impressive archiving extend to the many replies we and others wrote in response to this unfair post? Does it extend to the numberless other discussions we hosted on our message board, over years, on the Iraq death toll at a time when Iraq Body Count allowed no-one to comment on their website, as is still the case? Does it extend to the bitterly personal abuse posted about us by Robert Shone, Martin Orpen and others, including serious libels, on different websites over many years? Your work is clearly an extension of Shone’s one-man hate campaign against us here: http://dissident93.wordpress.com/medialens/

Stephen Soldz, who we like and respect a lot, got into a Twitter-type spat with several posters on our message board who were not part of Media Lens (contrary to the dishonest implication in your tweet). His problem with us was that we didn’t say ‘Stop!’, although he at no stage wrote to us to discuss the problem or request action (in which case we would certainly have responded). Perhaps we should have done more, but it is close to impossible to moderate all the many active discussions on our board and still do our work. We have personally experienced much worse ‘lynch mob psychology’ from high-profile journalists on Twitter.

The basis of much of your analysis seems to be that some people who agree with some aspects of our work have behaved badly. Not only are we personally to blame for whatever they do (in fact they are called ‘Media Lens’ by you), but we are to be repaid with the same or worse as a result!

The Editors