State Agency Gags Blogger

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At first I felt compelled to comment more about the story of a blogger whose Website has been banned from state agency computers, but there appears to be more going on here than I care to look at, and the blog owner appears fully capable of defending himself.

Gannett Excerpt:
The blog has irritated agency officials, including Secretary John Scocos, since its debut last year. They complain the blog crosses the line with hateful, personal attacks on their character that are distorted or outright false.

How often do we hear this about the mainstream news, cable news, political pundits, comedy shows, political candidates, campaigns, talk shows and no-spin zones? Now it's bloggers....for shame. What's this world coming to?

But after visiting and reading five random postings from the past six months of Radio Free Wisconsin Blogspot, I didn’t see any slanderous remarks or personal attacks, of course I may have missed the offending article or two. And I’ve seen far more acidic rhetoric espoused by our local newspaper editorials not to mention the career-ruining trash talk from the likes of “acceptable” personalities like Limbaugh, Coulter or O’Reilly.

As far as Radiofreewis is concerned, I only found it a little odd that visitor comments are not allowed and the stories have no attribution links. But other than that, the site is no different than the 56,600,000 other political and media blogs Google has registered in their search engines.

Blog Censored From State agency:
The blog has featured information about employment-related complaints filed against Scocos by Rick Demoya, a former agency administrator who was reassigned by Scocos in 2005. Demoya, who reached a legal settlement and retired last year, denied in an e-mail that he was the blogger but nonetheless denounced what he called "censorship at its worst."

It’s very possible that Demoya is not the mystery blogger. But if there’s one thing public leaders, management and professionals will not tolerate is criticism from anyone, so I’m really surprised a state employee reached a legal settlement without having a “gag” order issued as part of the agreement. This of course is assuming the former employee is the blogger. That’s just not how they do things over here in Janesville.

JG Excerpt:
Terms of the settlement required that Knipp not disclose the details of the settlement and that neither side criticize the other, Reak said.