Marc Perkel was interviewed by Jennifer Liberto and asked if he knew about Media Whores Online, to which he explained he didn’t. She then proceeded to print an article saying the project got started with some funding from him — and now Salon won’t amend it or pull the piece.

Here is the exact language in question:

As best can be determined, Media Whores Online originated in Tulsa, Okla., in 1996 when a self-proclaimed “ADD Catholic with an IQ of 64” began an irreverent left-leaning e-mail listserv called RL-LNW, short for “Rush Limba — Lying Nazi Whore.” Shy yet passionate, its low-profile editor, Terry Coppage, took on right-wing agendas with cutting and often crude humor. He received some financial help from Marc Perkel, an eccentric computer programmer who ran against incumbent John Ashcroft in the 2000 Missouri Republican Senate primary, garnering 10 percent of the vote with almost no campaigning. Soon Coppage began publishing his commentaries on a Web site called Bartcop, and adopted the moniker “Bart.”

Since the HTML version of the article in question cannot be accessed by the public at large, I’ve also created a plain text version for everyone’s convenience.

Here’s the actual Letter To Salon from Marc Perkel, but he also explained some of the details to me in an email:

I talked to her as she researched the article. She came across as if she were doing a pro-media whores article and asked questions relating to how sites like mediawhoresonline.com were a reaction to the failures of traditional news media.

In our discussion she asked who was behind the site and I made it clear that I had no idea – which is true. We talked about Bartcop.com – a site that I am behind and founded – with a guy in Tulsa OK in 1996 and I talked about why I was doing that.

I do think Bartcop did coin the term “Media Whore” so there was enough of a connection for this writer to deliberately confuse the facts. I think that mediawhoresonline was a bartcop inspired publication as are many sites on the web.

As best I can tell – this all started with people on CNN crossfire started arguing about who is behind MWO and made it out to be some sort of mystery or secret. This reporter who wrote the Salon piece did it from the perspective of smearing the left and to out the secret author of MWO. Having failed to get the facts as to who MWO is – she decided to out me and Terry as MWO.

Bartcop has dedicated an issue to her with links to many other sites that reacted to Salon’s story and Salon’s refusal to pull the story after Salon realized it was a false piece.