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Salon Hyde Exposé Spurs Death Threats, Hacks
(09/17/98; 7:41 p.m. ET)
By John Borland, TechWeb
There's a security guard sitting at the front door of Salon Magazine, the
Web publication that Wednesday broke a story detailing the adultery of one
of President Clinton's most powerful Congressional critics.
The guard isn't standard Salon policy. After posting the story Wednesday
midday, Salon has been besieged by electronic critics using everything
from hack attacks to conventional death threats, editors said.
"We expected a strong reaction, but I'm surprised at the ferocity of the
response," said David Talbot, the Salon editor who wrote the controversial
story.
Salon wrote Wednesday that Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), who chairs the
committee that will decide whether the full House should vote on Clinton's
impeachment, had his own affair in the late 1960s. The publication
documented the story carefully, putting together photos and interviews
with several people close to Hyde and the woman's family. Editors received
a statement from Hyde admitting the affair just minutes before the story
went live.
Already Talbot has received death threats as a result of his article.
Threats have been issued against other top editors. Their fax machine was
shut down by a series of "black faxes" -- a tactic in which the sender
repeatedly faxes an all-black piece of paper in a deliberate attempt to
break the recipient's machine. The magazine stopped accepting incoming
e-mail Thursday morning after an avalanche of hate mail and spam clogged
their servers.
"We haven't even read most of the hate mail," said Andrew Leonard, the
magazine's senior technology writer. "It's not even getting through."
The story has been angrily denounced by Republicans. Rep. Tom Delay
(R-Texas) blasted the story on the floor of the House Thursday morning,
and later sent a letter to the FBI asking the agency to look into whether
the White House was responsible for the information on Hyde.
But Talbot and the other editors bristle at the suggestion they are
serving as administration puppets, an opinion already being widely heard
on both conservative and mainstream talk shows. "It's not as if we're a
P.R. office for the White House," Talbot said. One of Salon's senior
editors recently called for Clinton's resignation, and the site regularly
carries columns and articles sharply critical of Clinton and his policies,
he added.
"The only reason people say that is because they're trying to kill the
messenger," Talbot said. Salon was similarly criticized for its
investigative stories on Whitewater, he said. "We have stunned those
people with our reporting."
Meanwhile, Salon's site was receiving close to 100,000 hits a minute by
mid-Thursday, straining the company's servers.
Much of the reader response has been positive, editors said. But the
electronic backlash also was building, as Salon's story was reported on
CNN and broadcast news stations, and criticized on conservative outlets
like Rush Limbaugh's radio show.
The concerted attacks against the site are unlikely to disappear quickly,
Talbot said. "There is a hard-core conservative information infrastructure
in this country, and they've been using it against Salon for some time
now," he said.
-o-
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Received on Mon Sep 21 19:36:50 1998