Via Poynter Online comes this report:
Former WHYY reporter Rachel Buchman left this voice-mail message — with her work number — for the conservatives at Laptoplobbyist.com: “I wanted to tell you that you’re evil, horrible people. You’re awful people. You represent horrible ideas. God hates you and he wants to kill your children. You should all burn in hell. Bye.” The station says: “Rachel has decided to move forward with her career and her life.”
A follow-up story adds a few extra details:
[Buchman] says she left a nasty message for the people at Laptoplobbyist.com because she was tired of spam. “I was incensed that I wasn’t going to finally get to ask a real person to remove me from the list,” she writes. “The answering machine asked the caller to leave a name and number, and without thinking, that’s what I did.”
OK, Rachel’s message was a little over the top, but tell the truth: You’ve screamed similar sentiments at your inbox, right? For the record, I think her only mistake was leaving her work number.
PS: I won’t link to the site she called, because they really are hateful and they really do represent horrible ideas. And if they ever put me on one of their mailing lists, I’ll probably call them myself.
Ed Bott 