I think that is the question.  All those who spew back press releases are hair-dryer reporters.  Those who call this for bullshit, are journalists.

Kiel finally posted that the Lieberman campaign has no proof to back up their allegations.

He's just a little behind the curve.  Stenography is ok in the short term -- where you can find someone to say something on the record and tell us what they said.  With a breaking story, such "facts" are a big improvement over what the big media does.  He's got Gerstein on record saying he has no evidence -- his next phone call should be to the sort of internet experts Stoller has been quoting.

The problem with the Steno Sues of the world is that they put out what purports to be a balanced story in the name of their supposedly neutral organization, then give you only the quotes from one side (often anonymously).  Kiel isn't pretending to do anything other than make phone calls to get statements onto the record that are of some interest.

FWIW: the CNN reporter uses the Vietnamese spelling on her last name, Betty Nguyen.

Your link to the CNet story isn't correct. That post is here.

Why do people like these even want to become journalists in the first place?? Have they got no soul, no honor, no sense of duty?

Scumbags. Idiots. Incompetents.

a message can come from joe2006.com, but you'd have to look at the headers to see if mail.joe2006.com was used as the smtp server.

Chris Matthews has now posted on Hardblogger that the Lieberman site has been hacked and alludes that it was the Lamont campaign that did it. This is such BS! I wrote him and challenged him to a $100 bet to my favorite charity that when this is over it will be discovered Lamont had nothing to do with it. If he is right I said I would donate the money in his name, if I am right he will donate the money to the   charity in the name of the Lamont campaign. I asked him also if he could smell a rat any longer or was he too stuck inside the beltway - and where is the proof of his allegations, the Lieberman campaign. As a former journalism student I know the first rule of reporting is that you need at least two solid sources before you report any allegations, where are MSNBC's? I'm sure he won't be responding anytime soon! Thanks for letting my vent on my first post here at My DD! I'll stop lurking and post more often as this is just a prelude for November.

Lieberman has apparently referred this to the CT Attorney General. These days, prosecutorial offices have forensic people who understand computers and the web, so they would be able to trace quickly what happened.  If it is as Kos and Matt say, a problem of trying to do the website on the cheap, it will be readily apparent and the Lieberman people are going to look really stupid.  

The odds of this continuing as a story beyond today increase vastly if Lieberman maintains his Indie run.  Also, other campaigns are going to want to find out what happened, how, and who was responsible to avoid the same problems.  Again, the responsible parties, and this includes the trigger-happy Gerstein and Steinfels, are going to look very foolish.

Dumb and dumber.

Matt...

WTIC gave Dan Gerstein a good 5 minutes to continue making his baseless accusations that Lamont supporters hacked their website. The whole thing reminds me of when Karl Rove bugged his own office so he could accuse his opponent of dirty deeds. In today's media, accusations are reported as fact.

Anyway, the host (I think it was Colin) did a fairly decent job in the interview. Gerstein condemned the Lamont campaign for not telling their "netroots" supporters to cease and desist. He claimed that it must be coming from Lamont supporters because Lamont gets so much support from internet activists. So in one fell swoop, he smeared Lamont and the netroots.

I called the Lamont campaign and suggested that they get on WTIC and rebut. Don't know whether they will or not.

On the plus side, Colin just reported the mydd post that explained the possible problem, and also just reported the DailyKos post doing the same - suggesting that possibly the Lieberman campaign may not have enough bandwidth.

Thanks for the quick debunking of this. I am outraged yet again of the tactics of the Lieberman campaign.

This is even funnier than when Stoller and others accused Cox of blocking Craigslist...

You can add Robert Yoon at CNN to the list of he-said-she-said hacks.

"Lieberman blames 'dirty politics' for Web site disruption." What a nice, balanced headline. It was on the front page of CNN.com, too, until someone changed it to "Lieberman and rival spar over Web site disruption."

Yoon manages to get a comparison to Karl Rove right into the lead. Impressive.

MyHostCamp.com-- their provider-- doesn't come up at all-- says "suspended page". What's that mean?

I wonder if the whole server went down.

1. First of all, even if attacked by someone malicious, there is no good reason for a rich campaign to have a site this down so long. Blame their bad decision making in choose a web team and a bad hosting site.
   
2. Then go right ahead and explain the 15 dollar issue and explain that why its doubtful it was even an attack. So why is the press spending so much time on an iffy issue when they dont even know who did it.
   

Don't you know how long it takes to scrub the Ds off so many pages?

The story is undergoing revision as I write this, but it's still a mess of uninformed innuendo. Here's my exchange with one of the reporters, Patrick Healy:

Patrick Healy's top story on the website, "Lieberman Camp Blames Rivals for Web Site Crash", is highly inflammatory and behind the story.

The number one fact it fails to mention is that the Lieberman campaign has zero evidence to support their claim of illegal behavior by the Lamont campaign. None, and they've admitted that for the record.

Furthermore, from available online evidence, the Lieberman campaign has been running joe2006.com on a $15-a-month cohosted web server with limited bandwidth; a reasonable and likely explanation is that the site exceeded its traffic limits last night due to the interest in the race.

Printing scurrilous accusations without any check during the polling of a close and tightly-fought race goes way beyond any standard of journalistic ethics I can think of.

But it does make for an exciting headline, doesn't it?

Best, Patrick

They reported this on CBS.  

Chris Matthews interviewed Lamont on the first Hardball episode and asked him at least half a dozen times if he would cooperate with the investigation into the "sabotage" or halt the sabotage by asking whomever is doing it to stop. Not once did he offer an alternative explanation for the web site crash. He just kept hammering the sabotage scenario. Something changed before the next show, however, because not one word was mentioned and the interview with Lamont didn't include any of the earlier questions.