The Truth and What David Said

Ok, so I had to do my little add on statments to his post as he raises way too many different issues all at once, so here we go:

If you've got snakes in the cellar there's only one way to get rid of them. You've got to do down into their dark, stinking den and chase them out in the sunshine. you could just spray the basement

That's how it seemed when I recently went to battle with a nest of vipers who pose under pseudonyms and congregate every night we do it in the day too on a defamatory blog thats a charge of a crime, need evidence please to hiss and spit their venom vipers usually transfer their venom by biting. The blog and the cowardly bullies hey, thats name calling, you are a bully Mr. Webb who frequent it began breeding quite a while ago, but the menace mattered little to me until I also became a target of their wrath you mean you came on the blog and attacked us.

I suffered bites from several of the serpents because I began reporting about the legal problems of Joey Dauben well the main reason you suffered is because you couldn't back up anything you said and you were woefully ignorant of the subject matter, former publisher of the Ellis County Observer blog, after he was charged in Navarro County in December 2011 with four counts of sexual misconduct with a 15-year-old male teenager. The assault allegedly occurred five years ago on a church camping trip that Dauben and the teenager attended.

While jailed, Dauben wracked up yet another felony charge, fraudulent use of identifying information, in Ellis County in connection with a blog post he wrote in mid-2011 that named and suggested violence against a Red Oak man whose ex-wife had accused her ex-husband of child molestation. In the story Dauben gave the man's name, address, phone number and place of employment. He also wrote that the man should die if the allegations proved true.thank you, that was at least a better understanding of what he was charged with.

As it turned out the allegations against the Red Oak man proved false they were false to begin with, and it landed Dauben in the biggest jam of his life -- next to the allegations of sexual misconduct with a minor, which he is scheduled to fight in a trial early next year why did you say "fight"?. Ellis County recently tried and convicted him on the fraud charges, and he received a probated five-year sentence another way to say this would be a jury of his peers took less than a hour to convict him.

Dauben, who started off as reporter for a small town newspaper and then moved on to self publishing under the Ellis County Observer banner as a blogger good, you got the distinction now, managed during his decade of reporting to probably make more enemies than any other writer that I've ever encountered -- even more than me probably true, notice how you make yourself the victim even in an unrelated matter.

Dauben's style was so reckless and unprofessional and exhibited such a total, unapologetic disregard for the truth that he absolutely intrigued me thank you, you said truth, thats a new and important word use in describing Joey. I felt compelled to meet him and attempt to influence him to mend his ways because I thought he probably possessed a natural raw talent that could be cultivated. Who's your daddy?

When I sent Dauben an e-mail he accepted my invitation to lunch, and he seemed interested in what I had to say about learning accepted standards of professional journalism and practicing them he was such a good listener. He had started writing for newspapers in high school and afterwards went to work for a small newspaper without obtaining a college degree. After talking to him, I attributed his overly-aggressive style and unprofessionalism to a lack of education and training thats a pretty bad diagnosis, its called ego.

At the time of our meeting in the summer of 2011, Dauben had just moved to Cedar Creek Lake from Ellis County to live with his 81-year-old grandmother and help care for her and not pay rent. He mentioned that he had left behind a professional matter in Ellis County that worried him, and I later realized he had referred to the botched story he wrote about the Red Oak man.

He confided in me that he feared he had finally given his enemies translation, I committed a crime -- which apparently included people of all walks of life from police officers to city and county officials, to lawyers and judges -- an opportunity to destroy him.

I exchanged a few e-mails and some media information with Dauben over the ensuing months, but I didn't see him again until this year, long after he was jailed on the sexual assault charges. His arrest stunned me when I read about it in local newspapers and saw it on television stations. The heinous nature of the charge especially shocked me I think I speculated those exact words about you.

I wrote to Dauben in jail and expressed my surprise about his arrest. He wrote back, and he assured me of his innocence poor word choice here David, you mean he claimed his innocence, if he assured you of his innocence you are now certian he didn't do it, do we have to teach you everything?. I decided to withhold judgement until I heard the evidence against him presented at trial why, he already assured you of his innocence. It was a combination of my finding his story believable and giving him the benefit of the presumption of innocence unless he is proven to be guilty. Nothing about Dauben ever gave me the impression he would be interested in sexual activity with another male of any age or with a child your gaydar might be off a little.

I started covering his case because it is an interesting one, especially because he believes that he is a victim of a conspiracy orchestrated by his enemies to silence him ditto, but we call me a hate filled viper while you are some kind of respected journalist?. Dauben had a high profile in Dallas and around Cedar Creek Lake prior to his arrest ahhhh, thats a stretch. Every major publication in Dallas had featured stories about Dauben prior to his arrest not every major one, probably in part because he is such a colorful character.

The Ellis County case made his legal troubles even more interesting to me because the prosecutor applied a law in his case that Texas legislators designed to prosecute people who commit fraud through the use of other people's credit cards and other financial instruments yeah but they have that extra language in there. Dauben argued that it should be a civil libel case rather than a criminal one, and that is the legal action I would have anticipated so you and joey are in the same boat here.

I'm uncertain why all of Dallas' publications dropped the story after initially reporting his arrest, but I decided that it merited much more coverage. At the time I still wrote columns for the Dallas Voice so it published most of those stories, and it finally became the sole publication in Dallas covering the Dauben case.

At one point my coverage of Dauben's case caught the eye of the Navarro County prosecutors and apparently so annoyed them that they subpoenaed me to testify in a gag order hearing intended to silence Dauben, who was sending out press releases regularly so they didn't really want the case to be tried in public, whats up with that?.

During the hearing the Navarro County prosecutor asked me what I considered to be an inappropriate question. "What is your interest in this case," he asked. Dauben's attorney objected to the question, but the judge allowed it maybe because your coverage was clearly biased. I answered something to the effect that there was a lot of interest in the case because of Dauben's high profile in the media. I don't believe a straight reporter working for a mainstream newspaper would have been asked that question, and I should have realized it was an indicator of unpleasant things to come play the victim card once again and why dont we just go ahead and impugn the Navarro DA while we are at it?.

That's when the rumors started wait, what rumors and how do you know when they start?. They went something like this. If a gay reporter is covering Joey Dauben's case and the Dallas Voice is the only publication covering it, then Dauben must be gay, the gay reporter must be sexually attracted to Dauben or the gay reporter must be supportive of adults engaging in sex with minors or all of the above ummmm ok, but that never came up on my blog.

About this time I received electronic messages from two of Dauben's bitterest critics I'm not at all a bitter critic, just a critic. Both apparently held grudges against him because of his previous reporting about them or someone close to them apparently you are wrong.

One woman who worked at a radio station in West Texas and got involved in the search for a missing child apparently hated Dauben there is that word again, did she say hate or did you put that word in her mouth? because he had accused her of faking a photograph about alleged evidence of human remains.

The woman contacted me and said she had heard that the thought of Dauben being released from jail terrified me, and that she had consulted with a prosecutor in Ellis County on his jailing Dauben on the fraud charges if he managed to make bail in Navarro County. I denied being afraid of Dauben, and she immediately signed off the Facebook account and blocked me. I later contacted her via her e-mail account because I wanted to know how she got the erroneous information she knew you were a Dabuenista. She refused to believe me, and she accused me of getting drunk somewhere oh wow, now we have this claim coming from someone else too and telling people that Dauben frightened me. It never happened, but she remained unswayed by my protests.

Then the author of the blog I referenced earlier as a snake pit contacted me, implying that he understood that I had some kind of special connection with Dauben oh no, who remained jailed at the time. He asked me if I would agree to be an anonymous source for his blog so he could write updates about Dauben's situation not really. The author said, "If there is some actual information ... or any message Joey is trying to get through ... I could post it on my blog and leave you completely out of it ..." The obvious implication was that I had an inside view of what message Dauben wanted the public to hear or that you were the only guy covering the Joey case.

I declined, saying that I really had no special inside track, nor would I do something like that in connection with any story, even if I did have an exclusive source you didn't say anything, much less decline. The truth is that Dauben probably would have communicated with anyone who would have reported about his situation true statement, even this enemy who started the blog for the specific reason of attacking Dauben enemy? thats Daubenista speak. What is extraordinary is that someone would hold such a bitter grudge against someone to start a blog devoted to the sole purpose of condemning them first of all, that isnt extraordinary, I bet at least 2000 such blogs go up a day, second of all I dont have a bitter grudge in any way shape or form as I told you in my email I personally hope he gets out of jail.

As it happened, Dauben finally made bail in Navarro County you mean some woman from New York came down and randomly bailed him out, now there is a story "as it happened", but it would not be for the entire length of his pre-trial period. Dauben couldn't refrain from exercising his passion for writing and reporting the news now you just said he reported the news, did you read what he wrote while he was out? You just called that reporting the news just so we are clear on this, and he eventually wound up violating the terms of his release on bond, which forbid him from using the Internet in any manner. During this time, I met Dauben twice for lunch, and we communicated occasionally about his case via text messaging, in addition to a brief conversation following a hearing.

After his return to jail and his trial in Ellis County, I wrote another story about Dauben's conviction. It apparently proved to be more than Dauben's critics could stand because I began again hearing the rumors about me, my sexuality and my motives for covering the Dauben case so you hearing rumors equals us committing the act?. The Ellis County district attorney made several harsh statements about Dauben that area newspapers reported, and I had not because you are biased. I didn't attend the trial so I could hardly quote someone I didn't hear speak you could after you read them quoted in a real newspaper. I reported the results of the trial, and the reaction to the verdict from the defendant's perspective -- which was ignored by local newspapers I agree completely in fact if you remember the oringal thing you came on my blog to whine about was that I said that your story was the only one Joey would approve of -- as relayed to me by his girlfriend. I couldn't talk to Dauben because he remained jailed in Navarro County awaiting trial.

After hearing about the resumption of the rumors once again, where is your evidence?, I finally decided to confront the critics on the blog, and a week ago I went online into the snake pit with my real name and my picture and took them all on at once. I acknowledge provoking them to spark a dialogue thank you for being honest, but I had no idea how much pent-up hostility awaited me.

It was a bloody fight, and I was bitten repeatedly. I punched one to the left, elbowed another one behind me to the right, kicked them one after the other with both feet and held two incredibly ugly, foul-breathed snakes by the neck choking them when suddenly I'm not sure thats an accurate description -- the website went down.

The blog's author, who goes by the name of a cookie that sounds like a woman's name but who is reportedly actually a man, later revealed that the hosting service company Wordpress.com shut down the blog and sent a message saying that the terms of service had been breached by the hate speech, which had characterized me as an old lonely gay pervert who wanted to get it on with a younger guy who liked to engage in sex with minors lets be specific, that was the opinion of one particular commentator. One also accused me of being drunk, which revealed to me who she must be I dont know what the hell this means.

The author repeatedly referred in the days following the blog's shutdown to my "extraordinary relationship" with Dauben, which actually had only amounted to three lunches in more than a year's time thats certainly more than with any other reporter, and one brief conversation after a court hearing.

Naturally, the first words out of the snakes' mouths would be that I somehow had orchestrated the shutdown of the blog. Actually, I didn't complain about the hate speech (I was too busy fighting), but even if I had what the OJ Simpson?, the stupid statements of the vipers obviously got the website shut down, not me no, someone complaining about hate speech towards a gay man got it shut down.

The author of the blog relaunched it on another hosting service the following day, and the attacks against me immediately continued with a little more restraint restraint? I thought I increased them. I stupidly continued to argue with them no you argued stupidly, there is a difference, and they added a false claim that the Dallas Voice had "canned" me because of my alleged "biased" coverage of Dauben well you stopped covering the joey story right after your subpoena.

That was yet another lie published on the blog about me. A personal decision, which included a summer of travel, led to my decision to quit writing columns for all of the magazines that previously published my columns just about everyone who was fired last year would say the same thing. I am after all retired and receiving Social Security checks after more than 30 years of newspaper work you just said retried again, no semi.

Now, Dauben's enemies there is that word again claim that I "drank the Kool-Aid," and that I am officially a "Daubinista," lol, I can't believe you said this on your own blog, this is like reading a journalistic obituary but that's not true either. I don't believe Dauben's conspiracy theory that should be very plural, but at the same time I don't think the hatred so many people feel against him because of his former blogging helps him any. Navarro County's first attempt to try Dauben on the sexual assault charges ended in a mistrial because of an inability to seat an unbiased jury out of a jury pool of 50 people so an unbiased jury member now includes someone who doesn’t want to give probation to a child molester? good to know what you call unbiased.

I did contact a former supervisor of mine from the days when I worked at the Southern Poverty Lawn Center in Montgomery, Ala., and asked him what he thought of the verdict in Ellis County. Based on my description of the case you mean your confused interpretation of the facts of the case?, Richard Cohen ewwww name dropping, I'm not sure he will love being thrown into this, the president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said he couldn't understand how Dauben got convicted on that charge under those circumstances. He suggested that Dauben's lawyer might want to contact the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas because the organization pursues free speech litigation, and I relayed the information to Dauben's camp thats insider trading. At the same time, I used the opportunity to ask if he intended to appeal his conviction, and I learned an appeal already had been filed.

To me, the Ellis County case represents a free speech issue to a jury it represented a crime. I frankly can't understand why none of Dallas' publications are interested in this aspect of the case, but I make no apologies for my interest in it maybe because your understanding of the case is flawed. As I understand which is our problem, it is the first time for the Texas law to be used in such a manner so I think the appeal court's review of it will be especially interesting. It will be setting a precedent if the verdict stands if this is true, I say good.

Dauben's attack on the Red Oak man was reprehensible, but I don't understand how what he did met the criteria for that particular law thats your problem. If the verdict is allowed to stand, who knows how the law will be interpreted next time against a blogger. It might even be applied to the snake pit when hate speech erupts on the blog again, you do not understand this situation. If it happened once, it probably will happen again. Perhaps, tonight.

Dauben's critics apparently are angry with me in part because they think I should more fiercely criticize him or just be balanced in your reporting. They also complain that I should have written more about the complaints of Joey's enemies rather than summarizing them, but I'm not writing a book you are also not a reporter.

In addition to ridiculing me for being old and gay and suggesting I might be a child molester thats cute, the eternal victim, they claimed I no longer am a journalist based on our own words including in this article, that I am washed up and will be ending my career as a mere blogger who will be disgraced for covering the Dauben case that is extremely likely at this point.

I disagree. It's not up to me or any other journalist to punish Dauben we wanted balance, not punishment. That's not my job you dont have a job. It is the job of the legal system to determine if he is guilty or innocent, and he deserves the same Constitutional protections that anyone else would -- no matter what the alleged crime I think we all agree on that.

As far as it goes for myself and how badly I may get beat up for covering the Dauben case and sticking to my beliefs, it goes with the work of the job again, you dont have a job, but if you do I'm assuming you are still playing reporter and since when does "sticking to your beliefs" become part of the job?. You come across all sorts of people when you cover the news and if you mess with snakes you probably will get bit. But I think I'm going to stay out of the snake pit in the future I bet you wont.