Anonymous commenter, time to come clean
I just received a comment that is highly critical of Dr. David Brailer based on his time as CEO of CareScience, a company he sold to Quovadx before he started consulting with the Bush administration a year before being named national health IT coordinator. I’d love to publish the comment, but first, I’d like the person responsible for it to identify himself or herself, or at least show me some proof of the statements made. Call it journalistic ethics, but I have a problem with trashing someone anonymously.
FYI, I do moderate the comments as a way of preventing spammers from advertising things like Viagra and penny stocks. The comments come to me as e-mails from Blogger, the blog service I use, so if a person wishes to remain anonymous, I have no way of figuring out a would-be poster’s identity.
And now, I want to lose my objectivity for a moment and wish a speedy recovery to Scott Wallace, CEO of the National Alliance for Health Information Technology, who suffered a heart attack a couple of weeks ago. From what I understand, he is progressing and is expected to be at the Alliance’s annual meeting next week.
I agree whole heartedly with your anonymous comments. I found a really good blog post about anonymous comments. The comments after the post make the post even better. Take a look:Anonymous Blog Comments
I certainly disagree that anonymous comments are not necessarily true and valid. There are many, many examples where they have been greatly valuable in unearthing the truth, particularly for public figures such as Brailer – “All the Presidents Men” ring a bell?
This last comment was from the same person who sent the original comment I rejected. I use anonymous sources in stories only when there is no other way of getting sensitive information. And in any case, I know who the source is–as Woodward and Bernstein did. Your information was unsolicited, not essential for any story and I have no idea who you are. At least have the guts to e-mail me privately with your name and contact information and make the case to me for protecting your identity. Otherwise, I won’t publish your comments. On the contrary, I’m more inclined to forward your comments to Brailer himself. Perhaps he could help me weed out your identity.Do read the post that “emr and hipaa” linked to above. If you can’t give me a compelling reason to protect your identity, then I’ll just have to call you a coward.