The controversy over an anti-semitic email to the conservative group Americans for Limited Government allegedly sent by an NBC News producer is continuing to develop as the network is still persistently denying it was sent. Both sides have now spoken on the telephone with each continuing to stick to their respective stories.
As reported earlier by NB's Noel Sheppard, the dispute involves an email message allegedly sent by NBC producer Jane Stone in response to a press release she was sent by ALG's director of media relations, Alex Rosenwald. According to ALG, the "Dateline" producer replied by "Bite me, Jew Boy."
NBC News denied the legitimacy of the email throughout the day Friday, issuing an even stronger statement after its president, Steve Capus, contacted ALG to ask for a retraction but was denied one:
Americans for Limited Government has chosen to launch an outrageous, reckless attack and smear campaign against an NBC News employee. Faced with irrefutable evidence that our employee did nothing more than ask to be removed from an email mailing list, the organization has maliciously published a fabricated email.
Our employee never sent any such email.. She is completely innocent of the outrageous charges and is being used by an organization to make a self-serving point. This is a shameless, hateful and defaming act which should be roundly denounced.
ALG is continuing to stand by its report with a statement in response issued moments ago from its director of communications, Carter Clews:
The increasingly hysterical responses by NBC news boss Steve Capus to the escalating Stonegate Scandal are disappointing at best and chilling at worst. Here is a man who runs what used to be a highly respected major news bureau who now finds himself conjuring up gremlins in cyberspace to defend what appears to be horrendously bigoted behavior within his own news room.
Having spoken directly with Mr. Capus for nearly 15 minutes Friday afternoon, I want to once again repeat my offer to him: if you really don’t believe that Ms Stone sent the ‘Bite me, Jew boy’ email to ALG staffer Alex Rosenwald, we will be happy to work with you to track down who sent it from her Blackberry using her email address.
This is precisely the same offer I made to Ms Stone at 11:00 Friday morning, when she denied having sent any email whatsoever to Alex Rosenwald. Now, Mr. Capus has changed her story to say that, yes, she sent an email, but it did not say “Bite me, Jew boy.”
While ALG has posted the text of Stone's alleged response on its site, it has not yet released the message "headers," a portion of the email which contains information on the computer that sent the message.
NewsBusters has contacted ALG media representatives and asked for the message header. ALG director of outreach Sergio Gor said that the raw message was stored on an office computer unavailable for use over the weekend. "I will have those emailed to you on Monday," he told us via email.
For its part, NBC has not denied that Stone contacted Rosenwald. The network agrees that she did, but that the contents of her message were simply a request that she not be sent any more news releases. NBC has also not yet released the headers for the message it says was sent.
—Matthew Sheffield is the creator of NewsBusters and its Executive Editor.
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Thanks for the update
September 26, 2009 - 13:06 ET by BlondeGuess we'll just have to wait until Monday, but I think we'll find the egg on NBC's face rather than the other way around.
Good poll topic.
I hope he fails, too.
NBC
September 26, 2009 - 13:39 ET by cajun2They will not retract their story. That would imply the use of facts. Monday will change nothing, why start telling the truth and break programing?
Lying
September 26, 2009 - 13:40 ET by Jerry MackThere is a 100% chance that one of these parties is lying. Thought I would post the obvious.
Editorial: I have never understand why the first response to "gotcha ya" is denial. Only serves to make the story bigger.
Hey Im Sure
September 26, 2009 - 13:41 ET by Redrowan2000Hey I'm sure she just misspoke or mistyped or er her dog ate the homework er. NBC Nightly Bigoted Coverage.
"Don't let the bastards grind you down."
I love ALG director of
September 26, 2009 - 13:55 ET by TEI love ALG director of communications Carter Clews's quip about the "Stonegate Scandal". However, his claim that NBC "used to be a highly respected major news bureau" could not be more inaccurate. NBC has never been "a highly respected major news bureau" outside of identically like-minded leftist political advocacy groups like ABC, CBS, PBS, CNN, MSDNC, ESPN, NPR, the New York Times-Democrat, the Washington Post-Democrat, Time magazine, Newsweek magazine, et al.
As I see it, I don't see a
September 26, 2009 - 15:17 ET by Kat Outta the BagAs I see it, I don't see a good reason why ALG would make this up, but I do see a good reason why NBC would try to deny it.
ALG sticks with story
September 26, 2009 - 15:18 ET by delmarNBC continues to change story. I've been following this story around the interweb and one thing I'm seeing is NBC defenders trying to lay down a "he said/she said" smokescreen. It's not going to work well if they say she didn't send an email and then switch to saying that she sent an email, just not any sort of vulgar, racist email. This is going to be fun to watch--although I should have said it will be interesting to watch--it's not cool to be as gleeful as I am about a scandal over such an ugly email. But I want Jane Stone to pay, publicly.
The email went through a
September 26, 2009 - 15:18 ET by FlashmanThe email went through a gateway server so whoever is lying here should come clean since they will be found out. I'm not taking bets on the guilty party but Jane Stone should have a long think about it.
I'm sure we'll hear an
September 26, 2009 - 15:20 ET by Kat Outta the BagI'm sure we'll hear an excuse about how she left her Blackberry unattended, so somebody else must have used it to send such an inflammatory message, etc.
Kat
September 26, 2009 - 15:28 ET by FeynmanFanThey're probaby having an all-day conference call to figure out how to blame it all on Bush.
"Reason and persuasion are the only practical instruments against error. To make way for these, free inquiry must be indulged" - Thomas Jefferson
FF--
September 26, 2009 - 15:46 ET by Kat Outta the BagMaybe they can call Rather and Mapes for ideas.
Kat
September 26, 2009 - 15:54 ET by FeynmanFanThey probably will take suggestions from Rather and Maples, as long as they don't involve documentation.
"Reason and persuasion are the only practical instruments against error. To make way for these, free inquiry must be indulged" - Thomas Jefferson
Kat, Except now
September 26, 2009 - 22:47 ET by JoeBobKat,
Except now that the story has changed from "I didn't send an email" to "I sent an email but it didn't say that", they would have to show that the email that "didn't say that" was actually sent, wouldn't they? There should be two emails in the system if "somebody" sent an email without her knowing.
Although I find ALG's delay in releasing the headers disappointing. They might have guessed that this would come down to a "Prove it!" controversy and been ready with every weapon in the arsenal.
JoeBob
Without recognizing the ordinances of Heaven, it is impossible to be a superior man. - Confucious
I also think the delay is
September 27, 2009 - 14:08 ET by Scuba DudeI also think the delay is due to the weekend being here and they did not want to let too much information out. They do not want to give NBC time to respond.
I am not sure if the email in question is real or not. I am witholding judgment until all the facts are made available.
The Obama Administration: THE most fiscally irresponsible Administration EVER
Post Racial America
September 26, 2009 - 17:25 ET by Tugboat PhilAny reference, however slight, to anything that could be upsetting to Obama is blatant racism. Any anti-semetic slur or actual violence toward Jews is totally imaginary.
(that is, unless a Jewish Democrat is elected President and then the rules change again)
Gun Control - The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her own pantyhose, is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound.
As Emails can be considered
September 26, 2009 - 20:13 ET by Dan The Man 2As Emails can be considered legal documents or at least Emails can be used as evidence in courts I think. I recently took a class in documentation and it basically said Emails are considerd important documents in the scheeme of things and we need to save them by law for a specified amount of time
So all they have to do is present the Email and prove their case. Im sure teh provider has records tehy can get also.
ELECTRONIC EVIDENCE...
September 26, 2009 - 20:55 ET by danybhoyDan,
You are exactly right, & since e-mails are easy to track. It should'nt be too hard to find out where this "Bite Me, Jew Boy" e-mail came from, if it was sent. The only real questions are these...
1-Did someone send it?
2-If so, who's phone/computer was it sent from...
3-Who has access to whatever account it was sent from...
...GE/NBC can say what they want. They can prove their side of the story very easily. Put up or shut up.
"...How blind can you be, don't you see...
...that the gambler lost all he does not have..."
Nightwish
Uh-oh!
September 27, 2009 - 00:11 ET by DoktorFrankenI feel a busunderouside a-comin'.
The Burden of Proof
September 27, 2009 - 08:21 ET by cjbreischThe burden of proof still lies with ALG, and they have yet to meet that burden.
Color me increasingly skeptical.
And I still want to know who Bill Wilson is and why is name is on Alex Rosenthal's e-mail.
The whole thing looks fake. E-mail is one of the easiest things in the world to forge (harder to forge well--which is why NB is correct in asking for the headers), and ALG has offered nothing in the way of evidence that this is not forged.
When I was in college, we would regularly send e-mail to people from "God", or their gf/bf or professor. This happened at least once a week (I majored in Computer Science--we were all geeks).
Furthermore, the claim by ALG that it's verifiable that the e-mail was not tampered with falls flat. Unless the e-mail was digitally signed, it can be tampered with at any host en route and both the sender and receiver would be completely obvlivious. Either a) the e-mail was in fact digitally signed, which seems highly unlikely, or b) ALG is stupid and doesn't realize this, or c) ALG is flat out lying.
So, I find myself in a very unlikely position at the moment, in NBC's corner.
tampered email?
September 27, 2009 - 09:37 ET by badanovit can be tampered with at any host en route and both the sender and
receiver would be completely obvlivious. Either a) the e-mail was in
fact digitally signed, which seems highly unlikely, or b) ALG is stupid
and doesn't realize this, or c) ALG is flat out lying.
How is it possible outside of a patched hack in a mail server can an email be altered?
I agree that email is a poor medium of messagsing but one of the things that is supposed to be inviolate is the message integreity from the time it leaves a server to the time it arrives to its destination. If the email was altered en route then whomever owns the mail servers has a huge problem with hacked email servers which have a substantially altered email system. If that is the case then NBC is in huge trouble not just in its mail servers, but they allowed a substantially altered email server to go online. Someone's gonna get fired if that is the case.
The same with whomever ALG uses for their email services.
Both scenarios are extremely unlikely.
ALG, incidentally can always show the raw mail spool including the email just prior and the email just following to show they are telling the truth. The same with NBC. I will be convinced when both show the raw spools.
NBC IT probably has better things to do than to hack an email server, spoof IPs and other black activity. ALG probably doesn't have the resources to do so.
Therefore, the answer is most likely the simplest: Jane Stone is lying.
---
badanov
Peace Through Superior Firepower
Instead of
September 27, 2009 - 09:47 ET by jessieHInstead of trying to get an answer from NBC, maybe you should ask their boss about it. General Electric is as corrupt as the govt.. Hell, they might be part of the govt.. They have all the tax money they can handle. Acorn is nothing,compared to GE.