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Michael Becker

Michael Becker is the Web Editor of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. He has been a blogger and professional journalist since 2005, covering subjects ranging from nonprofits and crime to engineering and technology.

A simple request

Another one of those journalism ethics situations cropped up today. An employee of a local businesses asked us to remove comments from a story on the Chronicle website because they were, the employee said, incorrect.

The Context

On Sunday, I published my second story about Montana Opticom’s $64 million stimulus award to bury fiber-optic cable in Gallatin County. Many local companies questioned the government’s decision to award the money, enough that it prompted a follow-up story.

Beneath that story, two commenters posted comments critical of one of the companies mentioned in the article. I’m not going to tell you which one. You can figure that out for yourself if you really want to, and besides, the company’s name is not really important to the ethical issues at hand.

One of the commenters was angry with the service he was receiving from the company, saying that it was the only company he had available in his area. The other commenter posted details of the broadband plans available to him through the company.

The Request

This morning, I watched two “report as abuse” e-mails come into my e-mail inbox, flagging both of these comments as “abuse.” By the e-mail address, I could tell that the person doing the flagging was an employee of the company.

Sure enough, a few minutes later I received an e-mail from the same person asking me to remove the comments because they were incorrect.

To provide some more context, I must in fairness say that we had, on a past story, removed a comment at the company’s request because it was, a different employee of the company said, incorrect.

In retrospect, that was the wrong thing to do.

Read More »A simple request

Money well spent?

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Two weeks ago, the federal government announced that Gallatin Gateway-based Montana Opticom would receive $64 million in stimulus money to bring world-class broadband access to rural parts of Gallatin County.

The plan is to bury fiber-optic cable throughout a 153-square-mile area, from Manhattan to Belgrade and south along U.S. Highway 191 to the mouth of Gallatin Canyon. Specifics of how that will be accomplished have not been released.

Opticom says the three-year broadband project will make high-speed Internet available to more than 18,000 people and 11,000 homes and businesses, bringing economic development, education and entertainment opportunities to an underserved area.

“It’s a good day for Montana,” Opticom spokesman Dean Genge said Aug. 4 when the stimulus award was announced. “More than jobs, it’s going to affect lives for a long time.”

But in the days after the award announcement, local Internet service companies began to question the wisdom of the government’s funding decision.

Those companies say the area in question is far from underserved and that the feds have wasted stimulus funds on a project that will only duplicate work they have already done to lay broadband infrastructure in northwestern Gallatin County.

 

Read More »Money well spent?

Meet Urtak!

I’m trying to determine whether Urtak could be a valuable opinion-gathering tool for the Chronicle’s website. What do you think?