Changes

Bergosh accused the ''News Journal'' of "outing" his identity on what he had believed was a safe outlet for anonymous opinion: "When the ''Pensacola News Journal'' created an anonymous forum, encouraging the use of pseudonyms, as to let people take down their guards and speaking in a frank manner regarding political ideas and thoughts, I jumped at the opportunity."<ref name="statement">[http://ricksblog.biz/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/jeff-bergosh.pdf Statement by Bergosh regarding Godzilla]</ref> The publication pointed out that their website's terms of use reserved "the right to identify you as the author of any of your postings or submissions by name, email address or screen name, as we deem appropriate."<ref>[http://www.pnj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=TERMS pnj.com Terms of Use]</ref> Hundreds of forum posters weighed in on the issue and it was disclosed that the original PNJ forum sign up disclaimer, which had indicated that personal information would never be disclosed to any third party, had been switched to a new 7 page terms of service in March of 2007 to a policy which allowed for the release of any information the paper deemed appropriate. Many forum posters understood that the new Gannett Terms of Service actually amounted to a "no-privacy" policy. The consensus among the posters was that the PNJ had been deceptive about how the new terms of service had been implemented. Bergosh asserted that he "never divulged any 'in-house' secrets or committed ANY crime" and that the left-leaning newspaper had engaged in "[[Wikipedia:yellow journalism|yellow journalism]]" as retribution for his conservative opinions, prompting him to "fight for my right to freedom of speech." In addition to these reasons, Bergosh pointed out that he felt that his scathing response to Richard A. Schneider's editorial from August 12, 2007 may have provoked the PNJ to dig up the information from their IT depoartment department to identify him in the newspaper.<ref name="statement"/>