Pink Eyed Jim’s Blog

****Note: This was actually going to be a pretty benign piece, essentially saying “caveat emptor,” until I saw that Thomas has taken the liberty of removing the clarifying links from the photos on commitcrime.com.****

Thomas Ellington, the owner of commitcrime.com did, in fact, email me back last week. I apologize for the delay in updating you folks on this, but I was planning on critiquing his response without actually printing his letter, out of courtesy to him. Since he’s already posted the letter on his blog, I’ll simply assume that he has no qualms with me making his letter public. My original letter to him can be found in the original Terri Schiavo Autopsy Photo Hoax article. Here’s his response:

yeah it’s traffic, this website is my means of income generation.
without it, i don’t eat. i did the photos as they are because they’re
obviously fake, lisa mcphearson is famous in her own right, and if
websites believe it and display it i’m not going to stop them. for
every website that’s displayed them there’s been someone on that
website who’s labeled them as mcphearson and corrected the belief. not
to mention the fact that i have several times prominently displayed a
link to my news blog which also corrects it.

the photos on my new blog aren’t intentionally misleading, i switched
the two photos up because i wanted the less offensive one on top, and i
forgot to switch the descriptions. thanks for pointing that out, i’ll
fix it. btw, on the original set of mcphearson photos, the nametag on
her wrist says ‘mcphearson’, not mcpherson. maybe it’s the hospital’s
mistake, i don’t know, but i tend to lean towards their spelling.
thomas

He has since taken down the link to the pictures’ caveat, which used to be in bright red letters on top of the advertised “Terri Schiavo Autopsy Photos” which in my opinion, is pretty despicable. But the fact remains that some people are not interested in bringing you the truth, but instead simply driving traffic to their sites. So you, the average internet user (I know at least twenty of you in the past day have found my site while searching for these supposed “Terri Schiavo Autopsy Photos”) need to be careful about what and who you believe.

The blogging world and internet world in general are full of independent sources of media. Unfourtunately there are an unsavory few who seek to further their own aims rather than reporting the truth. I despise this because it attacks my credibility just as much as it attacks theirs. The bottom line is: look for sources. If you see anything unsourced, be wary of it. This follows for traditional media too. It’s often that the major news (in all aspects) either editorializes or reports things with shoddy sources (e.g. Rathergate, anything on Fox News). You want the correct information, right? I assume so, otherwise you wouldn’t have even taken the time to look up “Terri Schiavo Autopsy Photos.”

Well, if it’s accurate information you want, unfortunately it’s also your responsibility to hold your sources of media responsible for the truth of the information that they provide to you. They’re providing you a service, right? They make tons of money off of advertising to you while you’re getting your news and media from them. They owe it to you to at least give you the truth. But you owe it to yourself to check up on them once in awhile, and if they’re not doing their job right, let them know. (Consequently you can email Thomas from either of his sites. commitcrime.com or ThomasEllington.com.)

I hope you’re listening, Thomas. If not, I hope the people that you’re misleading give you something to listen to.