Media Matters for America has previously documented several media figures who have highlighted controversial comments on progressive websites. Media Matters asks: Will the media report that while discussing breaking news of hostages being taken at Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-NY) presidential campaign office in Rochester, New Hampshire, numerous commenters on the right-wing website Free Republic posted hateful comments about the situation?

Examples of Free Republic comments on the situation include:

• Poster “Snoopers-868th” wrote at 10:36:23 a.m. PT: “Just another diversion or to seek attention and sympathy.”
  

• Poster “Thompson/Hunter 2008!” wrote: “Probably a man masquerading as a pissed off Republican. Upon further investigation, it will be found out the person is really a Hillary plant, trying to make Republicans look bad.”
  

• Poster “azhenfud” wrote: “Obviously the bomb is an implant to distract attention now focused on the Kerr Kunundrum,” presumably a reference to retired Brig. Gen. Keith Kerr.
  

• Poster “NautiNurse” wrote, “Attention seeking on an otherwise slow news day.”
  

• “Retired Chemist” wrote: “Probably works for the Clinton campaign.”
  

• Poster “swain_forkbeard” wrote: “My first thoughts: it's staged, designed to draw attention in N.H. Maybe Hillary even has to rush there dramatically and resolve the situation. I doubt it's true, but there is her record.”
  

• Poster “xzins” stated: “I would never want anyone injured, and unfortunately, given the candidate, I would never discount the idea of a staged crisis.”
  

• Poster “billhilly” wrote: “Staged by the Clinton Campaign to grab headlines?”
  

• “RoseofTexas” wrote: “Staged? Hmmmm the timing is suspicious!”
  

• Poster “Labyrinthos” quoted a previous post stating “I wonder what nutjob they paid to pull this stunt.... like all the people who they get to hang nooses to make people think conservatives are radical haters” and wrote: “Given the Obama surge of late, the Clintoons probably hired an African American guy named Barbarack Obaman.”
  

• Poster “Leisler” wrote: “Anyone know where [former Vice President] Al Gore is? Is the guy wearing a hubcap size gold medal with the words 'Nobel Prize' on it?”
  

• Poster “jveritas” wrote: “Someone in Hillary Clinton campaign spread the lie that this happened in her campaign office thinking that this will generate sympathy to the most unlikeable and meanest Presidential candidate in modern time.”
  

• Poster “rvoitier” wrote: “It's setup to get the sympathy vote. Ticks don't fart unless it's choreographed by clinton first.”
  

• “theDentist” wrote:

  Aide: “Senator, someone is holding hostages at your headquarters in Rochester, NH”
  Hillary: “Where?”
  Aide: “Rochester”
  Hillary: “And I should give a sh** because...?”
  (a couple seconds pas [sic])
  Aide: “It may help soften your image for voters.”
  Hillary (annoyed): “Well then issue a statement, but stop wasting my time.”
  

• Poster “Got a right to Life?..Huh?” wrote: “Now that is a creative use of campaign funds. I wonder if they paid a homeless man to pose as a wacko conservative. It would have cost them a pint of courage and a roll of duct tape. They need to keep close tabs on this witness, least she slip away without a trace. Hillary canceled her comments today.”
  

• “CaliGangsta” wrote: “Hope everything is alright. Hope this isn't a ploy by Hillary to get voter sympathy. She planted questioners at the debate, I wouldn't put it past her to plant a 'terrorist'.”
  

• Poster “Beatthedrum” wrote: “You can bet your bottom dollar the MSM wants this guy to blow his brains out, as long as he doesn't hurt anyone else. Great dramatic ending, that would give the story more legs.. Also if there's anyway this guy can be tied to a Clinton campaign worker (maybe urging him on for the publicity), it will shut him up if he's dead. Probably when the dust settles, dead or alive, this will be some nutcase who saw this as his chance at fame.”
  

• Poster “sulu” replied to a comment he quoted as “I wouldn't be surprised if some rabid Clinton supporter pushed some whack job to do this” by writing: “I think you're right. My friends and are at work are saying that if it's a plant, they most likely threatened him to release photos or some such, and promised him he'd be okay. In real life, I think this guy will have to end up having his brains blown out. You watch. He won't be allowed to live. Mark my words. They couldn't leave him alive to talk. He will be dead soon.”
  

• Poster “chemicalman” wrote: “I may be a little late at saying this, but don't want to look through 1500 posts to see if it's there. First the Hillary campaign plants questions...now they're planting bombs.”
  

Media Matters has previously documented media figures highlighting controversial comments on progressive blogs. For instance:

• Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz's March 1 column highlighted offensive comments posted on the Huffington Post blog “after a suicide bomber blew himself up at Afghanistan's Bagram Air Force Base, while [Vice President Dick] Cheney was there.” Right-wing pundit Michelle Malkin had posted the comments on her website, and Kurtz reprinted a sample of the remarks in his column. Kurtz wrote: “I would agree that it's absurd to view these assassination fantasies as anything other than the rantings of the fringe, and that they shouldn't be used to tar an entire ideology. All I'm saying is that it's really sad that some loons feel this way, and that the Internet culture, however briefly, gives them a megaphone.”

• On the June 29, 2006, edition of Fox News' Big Story, host John Gibson discussed a Supreme Court decision issued that morning that prohibited the use of military commissions for the trial of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, and cited reader comments posted to the Daily Kos blog which discussed the decision. Gibson stated: “One of the comments on the far-left Daily Kos, which is a blog, in which writers purported to analyze the Supreme Court decision -- fair and balanced, of course -- one writer actually said, per today's decision, the administration appears to have been engaged in war crimes which are subject to the death penalty. Wow! They're excited over there on the far left.”

• In an August 21 column, Washington Times columnist Nat Hentoff cited an August 8 Wall Street Journal op-ed by Lanny J. Davis, former special counsel to President Clinton, that quoted from comments by blog readers that Davis characterized as “extremis[t], bigot[ed] and intoleran[t].” Hentoff wrote: “Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman -- now an insistently independent Democrat -- was pilloried during his losing primary contest with Ned Lamont, not only for his stand on the Iraq war but also because he is a Jew. Being one myself for many years, I was not surprised by the centuries-old persistence of this hatred among several of the fiercely anti-Bush bloggers during the campaign.”