Masha, Please Introduce Yourself

It's a classic propaganda ploy: Write defending an institution without revealing you're from that institution. It's basically a nifty way to lie ... unless you're caught. And Patterico has nabbed an LATimes employee doing just that!

Masha, who's called conservative bloggers fascists, and who rises to a bitter and angry defense of Michael Hiltzik; you know, this Michael Hiltzik:

Editors' Note: The Times has suspended Michael Hiltzik's Golden State blog on latimes.com. Hiltzik admitted Thursday that he posted items on the paper's website, and on other websites, under names other than his own. [sockpuppeter!] That is a violation of The Times ethics guidelines, which require editors and reporters to identify themselves when dealing with the public. The guidelines apply to both the print and online editions of the newspaper.

In light of the boldface type above, Patterico's discovery is particularly ironic:

Read that comment [from a Masha post to Patterico] again, with its ringing praise of the L.A. Times, and its silly caricature of bloggers as “worse than Pravda,” spewing “idiotic propaganda.” Doesn’t it sound just like something that someone from the L.A. Times would say?

And the punchline is, as you have no doubt already guessed: it is.

The comment was posted from IP address 144.142.21.5, which comes back to The Tribune Company, The Times’s parent company. More specifically, it is an L.A. Times IP address, one that is “registered to lye1.latimes.com and is shared by multiple users.”

(You did realize I could check that — didn’t you, Masha? Have you paid no attention to this scandal at all?)

What Masha has done here is to defend the L.A. Times without telling us that she works for the L.A. Times. That’s a little weaselly, Masha.

As of the time of this post, a search of the LAT site revealed no links to Masha. So, will the real Masha step forward?

hat-tip: LGF
Tags: Masha, Patterico, L.A. Times, LA Times, Sockpuppet, Hiltzer