When Ledger-Enquirer reporter Lily Gordon wrote a short story Monday afternoon about a U.S. Army major filing a suit in federal court to stop his deployment to Afghanistan, she was not prepared for the reaction.
The article sparked the highest volume of traffic ever by a single story in the history of ledger-enquirer.com, including written threats against the newspaper.
“All I did was a write a story on an open public document and it set off a powder keg,” Gordon said Friday.
Maj. Stefan Frederick Cook and his lawyer, Orly Taitz, filed the suit July 8 in U.S. District Court asking for conscientious objector status and a preliminary injunction based on his belief that President Barack Obama is not a “natural born” citizen of the United States and is therefore ineligible to serve as president of the United States and commander-in-chief of the U.S. Armed Forces.
U.S. District Court Judge Clay Land dismissed the suit Thursday in a one-hour hearing.
Ledger-Enquirer Executive Editor Ben Holden summed up the reaction this way: “Basically, we were the forum for somebody else’s food fight.”
It became obvious Tuesday morning that the story, which was published on page A3 of that day’s newspaper, had taken on a life of its own.
Between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m., there were 62,140 unique yearly visitors to the newspaper’s Web site, said the ledger-enquirer.com’s top Web editor, Jeff Hendrickson. During the same time period a week earlier, ledger-enquirer.com had 864 unique yearly visitors -- that is, users who had not clicked on the site in the previous 12 months.
By the end of the day, nearly a half million new readers came to the newspaper’s Web site. There were 712,251 page views -- more than seven times a normal daily volume.
Earlier that morning, Hendrickson began the customary practice of offering the story to various news sites that link such stories to broader audiences. The Drudge Report picked it up, placing it in a prominent spot on its home page. That accounted for nearly 84 percent of the traffic to the Ledger-Enquirer’s site.
It wasn’t just the volume that was different about the story, it was also the intense reaction. When Gordon got to work at 11 a.m., her e-mail box was filling up rapidly. On a normal morning she has about 15 new e-mails.
“When I checked my e-mail I had 170,” Gordon.
Most of those took exception with one line in the story. “Actually, Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961, two years after it became a state,” Gordon’s story said.
One of the more than 300 e-mails Gordon received from someone at the e-mail address, jayson_aldrich@yahoo.com, after she wrote a second-day story read:
“Great! There’s hope for you!!! Even though you didn’t remove the statement from yesterday’s article -- “Actually, Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961, two years after it became a state”...you only moved it to the bottom, instead of up at the top where it was originally. The statement has NOT been proven. If it were proven, there wouldn’t be such a controversy, and the military most certainly would NOT have revoked Cook’s deployment orders!”
Several of the e-mails to the newspaper were threatening and editors reported them to authorities.
“This is complete speculation, but I believe in these situations the chances are 1-in-a-1,000 of something actually happening, but do you really want to take a 1-in-a-1,000 chance that one of your employees could be harmed?” Holden said.
The tone of the bulk of the e-mails and calls that reached well into the hundreds caused Holden to take notice.
“The chatter had the feel of a righteous cause -- almost a religious cause -- because some people hate this president,” Holden said.
Local law enforcement took the threat seriously, said Brad Hicks, the city’s director of Homeland Security. Thursday morning for Cook’s hearing, security around the courthouse -- which is located two blocks from the newspaper’s offices -- was tight.
At least five public safety agencies, including the Columbus Police Department, Phenix City Police Department, Muscogee County Sheriff’s Office and Columbus Fire and Emergency Medical Services and the U.S. Marshal’s Office, were involved in the operation.
“Any time you get a call that a threat is made, you go into a preventive posture to make sure nothing takes place,” Hicks said.
Precautions were taken so Gordon could safely enter the courthouse to cover the hearing. She went in through a back door.
In the end, the security plan allowed law enforcement the opportunity to evaluate their threat readiness in light of a range of possibilities.
“It is a lot better for us to learn from an incident like this than to stage an exercise,” Hicks said.
Gordon said she never felt endangered, but understood the reasons for the precaution.
“I trust local law enforcement,” Gordon said. “I know a lot of them from working the cop beat.”
She thought the anger was directed at a broader target.
“In general it was against a perceived liberal media bias,” Gordon said. “I just happened to be the target because I wrote the story.”
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