The Ventura County Star: Setting The Bar For Media Cowardice And Incompetence

Orwellian media is scary. Incompetent Orwellian media is hilarious.

The Ventura County Star published an editorial critical of a local DA and his disagreements with a local judge. But they have a comment section on their site, so a well-informed poster under the handle "bob100" posted a point-by-point response to the editorial and defended the DA's actions. The comment was courteous and extremely relevant. Having read it, I felt like I understood both sides of this conflict a little better.

Except, I had to read bob100's comment on a blog, where it was preserved after the Ventura County Star deleted it. Apparently you peons are not allowed to contradict the Ventura County Star.

I don't think I've ever been to Ventura County and, frankly, don't care too much about their judicial politics, but on a whim I created a login with their paper and told them (very politely) what I thought of their decision to delete comments which disagreed with their columnist and corrected his facts.

Would you like to read my comment? Well, you can't on the Ventura County Star's website, because after I posted it their Ministry of Truth deleted all the comments and disabled further comments on that page without notation or explanation. (Those bloggers will never notice!)

Fortunately that same blogger who started all this, Mike Lief, preserved my comment as well before it was vanished. I think the VCS is going to regret that decision very soon.

Big JYB tailwag: Patterico.