Hiltzik Suspended

The LA Times has suspended columnist Michael Hiltzik and will not run his Golden State column any longer. Hiltzik was caught red-handed using sock puppet identities to make comments on blogs. The Times said in their statement the Hiltzik will be reassigned after the suspension. The statement is disingenuous, though, by missing the central point of what happened here. They phrase it as just an old fashioned ethics issue. But it's a bit different than what they make it out to be. The odd thing here is they are killing his column and suspending him but say he did nothing wrong with the column or his reporting. So it's somewhat of an overreaction on the part of the Times' editors.

Hiltzik did not commit any ethical violations in his newspaper column, and an internal inquiry found no inaccurate reporting in his postings in his blog or on the Web. But employing pseudonyms constitutes deception and violates a central tenet of The Times' ethics guidelines: Staff members must not misrepresent themselves and must not conceal their affiliation with The Times. This rule applies equally to the newspaper and the Web world.

Using sock puppets is lame and Hiltzik's very public humiliation for that should be enough. Not having read a lot of his work, I'm likely not the best person to critique him as a columnist. I'm actually glad they did not fire him outright. I'm kind of curious if they are going to go after the other sock puppeteer they appear to have on staff?

I think Patterico brought the Times down a notch or two with this fight.

UPDATE: My thanks to Patterico for the link. If you have never been here before, please do take some time to look around.

Other Links to this Post

1. Patterico’s Pontifications » Hiltzik Column Discontinued; He Won’t Be Fired — Saturday, 29 April , 2006 @ 6:45 am