Talk:Dennis King/Archive 1

message: In an edit summary, User:Herschelkrustofsky asked, "Does Berlet claim not to have written this with King?" The answer is "yes," as Berlet edited the article himself. BCorr|Брайен 18:01, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Edit summary

message: Herschelkrustofsky, I am frankly sick and tired of your poor research standards and lack of scholarly approach. You toss in claims with no regard for veracity, references or good writing. When challenged, you resort to personal insults and wholescale reversions. From now on, you MUST provide reputable references for your claims, or I will delete them. As for that photograph, clicking on it only gives me information you have typed in. Please provide some evidence of who owns this photograph and that Wikipedia has that person's permission to use it; otherwise don't use it. Slim 08:22, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)
:The "hidden code" claim is a central thesis throughout King's book. If you want to become a proper Anti-LaRouche activist, that book is a must-read. Also note that Chip Berlet, in his edits of the article about himself, confirms that he also holds this view, that you must "decode" LaRouche. My personal opinion, since this is a talk page, is that these guys cannot find any real quotes to support their theories, and so they must postulate "hidden meanings."
:There would be no article about King were it not for his role as a critic of LaRouche, and therefore this is an article where LaRouche is "highly relevant" as are the views of his organization respecting King. And last but not least, Slim, you can get the particulars on any Wikipedia photo by double-clicking on the photo itself. I personally obtained permission from the photographer to have this photo appear in Wikipedia. I suggest that you take a deep breath and slow down before editing further; your anti-LaRouche activism has overheated your judgement. --Herschelkrustofsky 08:26, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't patronize me, Krusty. I suggest that we concentrate on the article and that you concentrate on sharpening your research skills. There are 616 Google references to journalist Dennis King; 447 of them do not contain the word LaRouche, according to Google. Of the ones that do, many of them stem from LaRouche publications. Therefore, it is not true that his sole or main significance is LaRouche-related. How on earth do you know that there would be no article about King were it not for his role as a critic of LaRouche? Finally, DO NOT call me an anti-LaRouche activist one more time. You are being highly abusive, painting me with the same brush you apply to yourself. I am a pro-accuracy activist, an alien concept to you, I know. As for the photo, Wikipedia cannot use it without evidence that the owner has given permission. If you have that permission, please post it, together with the name of the copyright holder. Slim 08:36, Dec 7, 2004 (UTC)
Slim, you can get the notice of permission, along with the name of copyright holder (EIRNS/Stuart K Lewis) by double-clicking on the photo itself. Forgive me for entertaining the thought that you might be an anti-LaRouche activist, although perhaps you might consider how your edit history could lead the casual observer to that misunderstanding. Has your quest for accuracy lead you to challenge the bona fides of photographs in any non-LaRouche-related articles?
BTW, how did you first become interested in Dennis King? I might make the suggestion that you provide a section for this article on those achievements that make him a noteworthy person, other than his anti-LaRouche activism. That would certainly put one controversy to rest. --Herschelkrustofsky 11:40, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Research standards

message: I cited a page from an organization (www.ex-iwp.org) of former members of the International Workers Party. It turns out that one such former member, Dan Friedman, wrote an article, which appears on the ex-iwp website, that was published in a magazine called National Alliance[link removed from site banned by Wikipedia], which is completely unrelated to the White Supremacist group with the same name. It is published by the New Alliance Party of Lenora Fulani (who is African-American). The New Alliance Party appears to be an IWP front. --H.K. 13:35, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The issue of the credibility, or lack thereof, of the IWP/ex-IWP does not hinge upon whether they knew King or LaRouche personally or not. It is a question of whether the organization(s) are known to be purveyors of falsehood and exaggeration, or whether they are a trusted source of credible information. If it is the former, it makes no difference whether any of them knew LaRouche personally or not (I note that on the ex-IWP website, the individual who is used as a source for the LaRouche article is described in NCLC memos as a "paranoid schizophrenic" and a "police agent.") If they are untrustworthy, their animus toward LaRouche as either disaffected supporters, or failed infiltrators, would likely aggravate their propensity for fibbing. On the other hand, if they are found to be a credible source, Dan Friedman may very well have known Dennis King personally: the community of professional leftists in NYC was pretty incestuous in those days. --H.K. 06:14, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: "National Alliance"

message: It is entirely possible that the PRA website once posted something by Dennis King, but is there a cite or source for this claim? I have no recollection of it, and I am the webmaster. In any case, what is the point of including this information? King has no formal ties to PRA, and never has. He is someone whose work we cite with approval, but we do that with scores of researchers. --Cberlet 14:27, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Source of Info?

message: Herschel, you cannot use LaRouche sources for this article. Dennis King is not a "closely related" article within the terms of the ArbCom ruling. He wrote a book about LaRouche 16 years ago. That doesn't make him closely related to LaRouche; he's just a commentator like many others. Therefore, any information that goes into this article must come from sources that are separate from LaRouche. The Daniel Brandt/Namebase reference you gave was based entirely on the LaRouche affidavit.
If you want to write about the so-called John Train Salon, is there a mainstream news article about it somewhere?  If there was such a prominent gathering of journalists and intelligence officers engaged in a plot, someone more reputable is likely to have written about it. Slim 22:23, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)
:Daniel Brandt reviewed the affidavit and offers his own assessment. He is not a LaRouche supporter. The affidavit was entered into court as sworn testimony, and is not someone's speculation. 
:Train & co. did not exactly issue a press release after holding their meetings. They did not wish to advertise their activity, and Chip Berlet's recent rampages at Wikipedia suggest that some people are still hypersensitive about public scrutiny of these events. None the less, the documentation is solid, and I will add the Mira Lansky Boland testimony if that will satisfy you. --HK 22:33, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The "conspiracy researcher" formulation was added by Chip Berlet to the quote as it appears in the Berlet article, and Weed apparently transferred it intact to this one. A Google search for "Mark Evans" + "Journalist" turns up 1,730 entries, which satisfies me that he probably has as much claim to being called a journalist as Berlet does, so I have made the quote visible again, sans the "conspiracy researcher" formulation. --HK 15:41, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: This is not a proper way to do research. I just did a Google search on "LaRouche" and "Fascist" and came up with 32,000 entries. Proof? Of what?  What mainstream or reliable alternative publications has Mark Evans written for? I am only aware of his work as a conspiracy researcher.--Cberlet 18:37, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: A Google search for "Chip Berlet" + "Journalist" only turns up 902 entries, despite the fact the Chip must have written a hefty percentage of those 32,000 entries calling LaRouche a fascist. --HK 21:53, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Sources

message: The article on Richard Mellon Scaife includes this sentence:
:He also provided funding for Dennis King's campaign against Lyndon LaRouche.
Two questions: do we know that Scaife provided this funding? And, is it correct to say that King conducted a campaign against LaRouche? I don't see that information in this article. -Willmcw 21:00, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Of course, this is why your critics do not consider you and King to be "journalists." Dick Scaife does not "facilitate research" by "journalists", he gives money to "campaigns" -- unless you count the money he gave to the "Arkansas Project" of the American Spectator. But wait -- that was just a "campaign" against Bill Clinton, masquerading as "journalism." Weed Harper 15:37, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Facts matter.  Supposition, rumor, and suspicion are not fact. There is no evidence that Scaife ever funded King. The charge originates with the LaRouchites. What is arguably fair is to say that King attended one meeting with Scaife at the home of John Train to talk about LaRouche. I used "facilitated" to try to attain a NPOV that the LaRouche supporters would accept.  --Cberlet 16:26, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

text: There are a logic gap and evidence void here. Even if King was at such a demonstration, you would have to document that King was there as a demonstrator, not a journalist covering the event; and then you would have to document that King recieved funding from Scaife before that event.  Even then the word "campaign" could be considered biased. If (and only if) you can find non-LaRouchite documentation for these claims, it would be worth discussing the sentence. --Cberlet 16:54, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Scaife & King

message: For ten years King was a member of the Progressive Labor Party, which he left in 1973. 
An unregistered user has been deleting this without explanation. I don't know if it is true or not, but it is sourced. Therefore I've been restoring it. If anyone has better informaiton then let's use it. Cheers, -Willmcw 21:56, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
:The bio of King is only four sentences long. Why should one of those sentences focus on King's political activities of more than thirty years ago? This would be worthy of mention if the bio of King was a substantial one dealing with his entire life. It's not, and if you look at the history of this article you will see the stuff about PLP was originally inserted by followers of LaRouche. It was inserted as part of a larger attempt to discredit King today, decades later. It was left in the article as a sop to the LaRouchians during the wikipedia battles of last winter. My argument for removing it is not the truthfulness of the sentence in question but its appropriateness. Given the brevity of the bio of King and the lack of any clear picture of what he has done over the course of his adult life since his twenties, the sentence in question appears to be implanted for malevolent reasons. The solution is not to expand the bio of King, which would only lead to further LaRouchian attempts to turn the bio into a dart board, but to simply delete the sentence.--May 10, 2005
::Thanks for responding. The activities of people in the past are precisely what biographies are made of. Whether those activities were five years or a hundred years ago makes little difference. This will never become a substantial article dealing with his entire life if we start by removing information. The motives of editors in adding information is generally best left unspeculated about, as we try to assume good faith.  There seems to be an assumption that participation in the PLP was a bad thing and mention of it is inevitably derogatory.  They are not purported to have killed anyone or broken any laws, so I don't see why it should be considered as harmful info, except for the fact that his opponents like to mention it. The LaRouche folks have not been using this as a dartboard recently, and in fact, have not been participating noticeably in the project recently. I think that the addition of more information, particularly positive info, would be helpful.  However if there is little of note to record about King then deleting the article altogether is an alternative. In conclusion, I think that removing sourced, apparently true, information from an article is almost always wrong and I do not see an adequate justification in this case. -Willmcw 23:49, May 10, 2005 (UTC)
Facts don't exist in isolation. They exist in a context. The context here is a postage-stamp bio that simply states the person has written two books and worked on investigating LaRouche with two other journalists. Period. Then tacked on, oh by the way, he was a communist 35 years ago. Have you treated any other postage stamp bios of relatively obscure people in this way? Name one. And its not true that you don't delete facts. For instance, there was a paragraph in the LaRouche article listing several journalists (including King) who'd worked on the investigation of LaRouche in various parts of the country and commenting on their cooperation with one another. For better or worse, it was deleted because somebody thought it wasn't relevant. Did you restore it? No. Did anyone else restore it? No. I have factual things taken out of articles I've worked on (including bios)all the time by people who felt the facts in question weren't sufficiently relevant in the context. With all due respect, I think Willmcw's argument is disingenuous.--May 11, 2005  P.S. Willmcw things we should assume that editors act in good faith when they add something. I think the record of the LaRouche editors on various articles suggests that this is not always the case.
:The deeds of the subject of a biography are more relevant than the deeds of others. Thus, the actions of King are somewhat relevant to LaRouche, but highly relevant to King. Regarding LaRouche, it became evident that some editors who support LaRouche were not showing good faith in their work. Despite that instance, we should still assume good faith until it is proven otherwise. And good edits made in bad faith are still good edits. -Willmcw 06:27, May 11, 2005 (UTC)
::This is not a content dispute: it is a clear instance of vandalism. Unsupported deletion of relevant material from an article is classified as vandalism. I don't know what the motivation for the vandalism is and I don't care. Continued repetition of the offence would be an appropriate cause for an administrator to consider blocking the offending account. Tannin 07:54, 11 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  PLP 

message: The current version of the article contains this formulation: "During the 1960s King was active in the Progressive Labor Party at a time when it was involved in fighting the scientific racism of intelligence researchers like Arthur Jensen." The link, to a John Birch Society site, mentions the PLP membership but nothing about Jensen or scientific racism. This should be reformulated. Is there any evidence that King joined the PLP specifically to oppose Jensen et al? It seems more likely that he joined for the same reason that anyone joins a political party, which is to say, general agreement with its tenets. --HK 16:03, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Non Sequitur

message: Is it still correct to call King an investigative journalist? It looks like he hasn't published anything for over a decade. Now it would probably be more proper to call him a "blogger." He may have some new profession now that puts bread on the table. --Mr Keck 21:23, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I changed it today. Also, his given name is "William Dennis King." --Mr Keck 15:02, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I rephrased this. Not only is "blogger" inaccurate, but here is a reference that I am still regarded as an investigative journalist albeit not as active as in past decades.  (see Ireland's May 21, 2005 piece). The last edition of my book on investig journalism techniques was published in 1999 and I'm working on a new edition. I continuously use investigative methods in compiling articles and gathering public records for my website. As to publishing in convention mediums, Mr. Keck has no way of knowing what I am or am not working on. So I deleted the word "former" as being not-sourced. And by the way, thanks, Mr. Keck, for providing my full name.--Dking 00:20, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You appear to be citing a blog to back your claim that you are not a blogger. Is there an actual distinction between "web-based advocacy journalism" and blogging? --Mr Keck 14:28, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I never said I wasn't a blogger only that blogging is only a relative small part of what I do on the web. I mostly put research articles and other materials on my and other websites apart from blogging. Because these writings have a strong point of view it is accurate to refer to them as "advocacy journalism." I have never called the Pope "the Rat[zinger]" or written anything about him either positive or negative.  Doug Ireland, whose blog site I cited, is a nationally known journalist. I did not cite his blog as a reference source within the body of the article, which indeed would be questionable, but merely on the discussion page. Mr. Keck's revision of the article itself was improper because it was unsourced and simply his own unsubstantiated opinion. But even if I never published a work of investigative journalism at any point in the future, his description of me as a "former" journalist would be improper since this is not done in biographical encyclopedia articles. A person know as a boxer, a dancer, or a politician may retire or die but they are still referred to as an "American boxer," etc. in bios, not as "retired boxers," etc.--Dking 17:00, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

text: I am deleting the statement again since LaRouche follower NathanDW has restored it in the original form which does imply that I called the Pope a "rat." And even in respect of Ireland the statement is not accurate; he includes the term "the Rat" (capitalized) in a list of aka's for the Pope, and the Pope's prior name was Cardinal Ratzinger. Also, since I did not use the term myself, capitalized or not, the fact that Ireland used it is irrelevant to this discussion page. The link to Ireland was merely cited as an example that I am regarded as functioning as an investigative journalist. I gave the link because Ireland is an established journalist, which I think is indisputable. That a LaRouchian should complain about Ireland's criticism of the Pope's stance on so-called family values issues is laughable considering that (a) the LaRouche organization recently purged all its members who had returned to or converted to Catholicism as a way of distancing themselves from LaRouche's demands; and (b) the LaRouche organization has pressured women in its ranks to have hundreds of abortions over the years.--Dking 22:32, 30 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Dennis King's profession?

message: I added a tag indicating that more reliable sources are needed. It is probably not a good thing when the "best" source referred to here is a publication of the John Birch Society. Quatloo 21:34, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Sources tag