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Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 5920
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 22, 2007 - 01:57 am: | 
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Posted on Thu, Jun. 21, 2007
FBI probing threats to Miami Herald's Pitts
By GREG GORDON
The FBI is investigating threats against Leonard Pitts Jr., a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Miami Herald, after a column he wrote about black-on-white crime triggered a furor on white supremacist websites.
Days after The Miami Herald published Pitts' column, Overthrow.com posted his address, his home phone number and his wife's name. Several other white supremacist Internet sites followed suit, and one gave directions to his house along with a satellite image of the neighborhood.
Pitts said that none of the threats was specific and that ''nobody has come to the house.'' However, he said, someone leafleted his neighborhood with a flier attacking him for the column.
Pitts has received dozens of hostile phone calls at his home and about 400 e-mails, said Dave Wilson, The Miami Herald's managing editor for news.
''An unsettling number of those were threats,'' Wilson said. The messages, which ranged widely in gravity, included death threats, he said.
WEBSITE EDITOR SPEAKS
Wilson said he had tried to prevent the incident from escalating by sending an e-mail to Bill White, editor for the site, asking him to delete Pitts' address and phone number.
He said White replied: 'We have no intention of removing Mr. Pitts' personal information. Frankly, if some loony took the info and killed him, I wouldn't shed a tear. That also goes for your whole newsroom.''
Reached in Roanoke, Va., where the website is based, White said he is 30 years old and is the ''commander'' of the American National Socialist Workers Party, which aspires to build a nation ''modeled on the German Third Reich.'' He said the group has 280 contributors.
Told that the FBI is investigating the threats, White said: ``I haven't encouraged anybody to do it, but it doesn't bother me one bit. . . . Law enforcement doesn't care. We have a controversy like this about every two or three months. They don't waste their time contacting me anymore.''
Judy Orihuela, a spokeswoman for the FBI's North Miami Beach office, said the bureau ''is investigating,'' but she declined to comment further. Wilson said that an FBI agent had interviewed employees of The Miami Herald, The McClatchy Co.'s largest newspaper.
THE JUNE 3 COLUMN
Pitts' June 3 column challenged the assertions of white supremacists that the recent murders of a white couple in Knoxville, Tenn., reflected a surge in racially motivated violence by blacks against whites.
Five blacks have been arrested, but Pitts emphasized that the killings weren't being investigated as a hate crime, and he rejected the groups' contention that black-on-white crime is underreported.
Pitts also wrote that blacks and Hispanics ``are underrepresented in news media as victims of crime and significantly overrepresented as perpetrators, based on crime statistics.''
Pitts, who won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, closed by offering four words to white Americans who feel victimized: ``Cry me a river.''
© 2007 Miami Herald Media Company. All Rights Reserved.
http://www.miamiherald.com/460/story/146399.html
Column in question by Leonard Pitts:
http://www.thumperscorner.com/discus/messages/179/27127.html?1180973248 |
Robynmarie
Regular Poster
Username: Robynmarie
Post Number: 477
Registered: 04-2006
Rating: 
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 22, 2007 - 05:34 pm: |
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Thanks for sharing this. I am not a huge Leonard Pitts fan, but this is the kind of info everyone should know when folks start talking about how everything is all good with race relations. Crazies are still around and willing to do serious damage. |
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