18337: Dorce: Re: 18333: please post anonymously -- Port-au-Prince Sunday Feb. 8 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: LAKAT47@aol.com

In a message dated 2/8/04 9:21:43 AM Pacific Standard Time, anonymous writes:

>> Bob, I am protecting my sources and need to post anonymously.

 10 a.m. Sunday Feb 8, 2004.  News from Port au Prince by telephone.  Many of
 the side streets are barricaded in the regions of Carrefour, Diquini and
 Martissant in the capital.  People in the neighborhoods to each side of the
 Route de Carrefour are not able to leave their neighborhoods and take the
 main road.  There are barricades made of burnt-out cars and refrigerators
 blocking the side streets.  No one seems to know which "party" has put up
 these barricades overnight.  People are telephoning each other to say "Stay
 home today, lock yourself in today."  There is no sign of fighting or
 demonstrating in these neighborhoods right now.
  In other news from Grand Goave -- the police force there have abandoned
 their Commissariat building, have left it empty. Also, news from Jacmel --
 the main road into the town of Jacmel is blocked and barricaded, and
 tap-taps or trucks coming from the capital cannot get in.<<
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
This is a most inflammatory post.  I don't have a problem with opinion posts
being anonymous so that people who have reason to fear for their safety if
they are candid in public will still feel free to post on the Corbett List.  Or
those who perhaps want to avoid confrontation with people who disagree with
them may wish to post anonymously.  But to report news items, that have not been
corroborated by any official news source or reliable source, anonymously is
bad form.  News that is inflammatory in any direction should be identified by
author so that it's authentication or credibility can be determined by the
reader.  For instance, if I were to read that AHP wrote this, I might give it more
weight than if it came from oh say Michael Norton of the Miami Herald.  Some
others would find the opposite true.  To each his own.  Nonetheless, an
anonymous account of such goings on that might serve to encourage a civil war, seems
inappropriate or at least incomplete.

Just a thought.

Kathy Dorce~