Scott Hudson and Intellectual Dishonesty

I see Scott Hudson is chastising downtown business owners and others
for the "intellectual dishonesty" they show in not supporting the
DDA's Broad Street parking takeover.

Makes me want to publicly ask WGAC and Scott Hudson to correct and
apologize for the "intellectual dishonesty" of Hudson's year-old hit
piece on me that still sits on the WGAC website.

This first part isn't really to do with me, but for those of you
unfamiliar with his, uh, style, here's a classic Hudson opener: "First
let me state for the record up front, I am an 'activist journalist.'
Corruption, greed, dishonesty, blight, and hypocrisy are all things
that I abhor." Doesn't that just send shivers up your leg?

Although I have an urge to make fun of every line, I'll try to just
hit the actual untruths that he refuses to correct. Since he hates
hypocrisy and his whole piece is about how "Ms. Peterson broke with
many ethical standards and left behind a trail of misinformation that
ultimately - I believe - causes harm to everyone who presents news in
the media and the public as well," I can't imagine why, although I've
emailed him corrections twice, he says he won't correct or apologize
and that he stands by what he wrote.

He seems to assert that I was misleading by using straight data from
the Georgia Department of Labor instead of using the formula preferred
by local economics professor and advisor to the mayor, Mark Thompson.
He also parrots Thompson's bizarre accusation that I made up a quote
and attributed it to Mayor Copenhaver when that quote was hypertexted
to the source, The Augusta Chronicle. "Indeed, Thompson took the
unusual step, for a mild mannered business professor, of insinuating
Peterson either misquoted the Mayor or simply made words up for him
and placed them in quotes. Such an accusation would be the kiss of
death for any credible journalist, but not Peterson. Her disdain for
the Mayor went so deep that she may have created a whole new genre of
creative writing: blogastalkarazojournalism." Hold on the that word.
We'll get to the stalker part.

"A recent Peterson piece titled 'Face Book Mayor' sent shock waves
throughout the local world of newsgathering." (I just like that
sentence.)

This part is pretty money, too: "Rule number one in journalism is that
you do not employ an attack strategy with an interview subject unless
you are convinced through documented evidence that the person has
committed a crime. Rule number two is that you never cloak your
identity unless rule number one’s exception is employed. Rule number
three is you do not stalk an interview subject unless rule number
one’s exception is employed. Peterson broke all of those rules and
then made up some new ones." (What is an attack interview, you ask?
None of the journalists I asked knew that one. Maybe Hudson went to a
special school of journalism. Did he go to school for journalism at
all?) My interview with the mayor was a scheduled sit-down interview
with prepared questions about mayoral things. I did not cloak my
identity other than making up a fake facebook character holding a big
fish to get back on Deke's facebook friends list and didn't use the
identity to communicate at all, as far as I remember. So if one more
random follower on Deke's fb page somehow cloaked my identity, huh.
And number three is pretty bad. Here Hudson pretty much accuses me of
a crime. I guess he's taking the journalist privilege of being
convinced I'm guilty. Let me be clear, all communications I had with
the mayor were at public meetings or scheduled with him through his
office or were through his office phone and email (and of course there
were those first communications, all polite and proper, through
facebook about hotel taxes and baseball stadiums before being
defriended).

There are a couple other little mistakes for those of you interested
in Scott Hudson's level of professionalism and fact-checking.

I didn't file a "patently silly Freedom of Information Request" for
the mayor's calendar. I asked Deke for it on the phone as I wrote in
the story. (Never mind the idea that it's well within the citizens'
interest to look at what the mayor does while we're paying him.)

"Our budding investigative reporter then followed the Mayor and
Commissioners to their annual retreat in Athens. The meeting had a
quorum of elected officials, so there was nothing inappropriate with
her being there, except Peterson was not there to cover the event and
did not seem to be interested in what the officials were discussing
there." Actually, I wrote about the retreat for the Spirit and it's
available online and was presented to Hudson in my request for
corrections as well.

I guess I'm done. Is this where I do an ad in my film noir
detective/journalist voice? No, I won't do that. I know! I'll list
sources.

Scott Hudson writes about me and the problem of untrustworthy
fake uneducated biased fibbing journalists at WGAC.

I write about the mayor and what he does for a living at Metro Spirit.

I write about dazzling stats at The Augusta Citizen-Investigator.

I write about the Commissioners' retreat at Metro Spirit.