Governor apologizes for deleted Facebook comments

Jon Murray | The Indianapolis Star

INDIANAPOLIS -- Gov. Mike Pence admitted Friday that some angry constituents were right.

Some of the hundreds of comments that his staff deleted from the Indiana governor's official Facebook page this week were targeted, Pence said, because they expressed disagreement with his opposition to gay marriage.

And that went beyond the office's internal policy of removing only profane, inflammatory or uncivil comments, Pence concluded.

So the governor issued an apology Friday on Facebook, saying his office would review its practices and soon post a formal standard of conduct prominently on the site to make the rules of the engagement clear.

"Hoosiers expect our public debate to be open and respectful and we will ever seek to live up to that standard," he said. "In agreement or disagreement, I respect the opinions and the freedoms of all the people of Indiana."

The mea culpa followed two days of assertions by the governor and his office that staff members were removing only comments that were profane or uncivil.

The Indianapolis Star was first to report Wednesday that some commenters suspected their contributions were being deleted only because they opposed the governor, not because they were disrespectful.

On Friday, Pence said they were right.

"On careful review, it (appears) ... some comments were being deleted simply because they expressed disagreement with my position," Pence said in the statement. "I regret that this occurred and sincerely apologize to all those who were affected."

The Republican governor's statement received a lukewarm response from some of the commenters whose posts were deleted.

"It's all very official and all very by the book," said Beth Hollandbeck Barnes, 44, who lives in Brownsburg. "But what it doesn't contain for me is any true sense of contriteness for the people, like me, who had the feeling of being shut down because we disagreed with him."

Barnes' Wednesday comment — captured by another commenter in a screen grab before its deletion — asked Pence, in part, to explain to three of her children why their 18-year-old brother, who is gay, "doesn't deserve the same rights they do."

Local political blogger and attorney Paul Ogden offered a different take on Pence's apology, crediting him for admitting he was wrong.

"People can be surprisingly forgiving when politicians are willing to admit they are human and make mistakes," Ogden wrote on his blog, called Ogden on Politics. "Governor Pence initially stumbled in his response to the Facebook deletions, but today he hit the ball out of the park with a classy apology."

Still, others felt no apology was necessary.

"No need for apologies," John Collins wrote on Pence's Facebook page. "It's his page. He can delete whatever or whoever he wants. No different than any of you controlling your own fb page. It's fb, not life or death people."

Some created new online outlets to criticize the governor.

A Facebook page called "I Got Blocked By Governor Mike Pence for stating my Opinion" notched more than 1,000 "likes" by Friday.

And since Thursday, www.pencership.com — a name that blends Pence with "censorship" — has been collecting screen grabs of comments that later were deleted from Pence's Facebook page. That site was created by Indianapolis Web designer Andrew Markle.

Pence spokeswoman Kara Brooks said users whose commenting privileges were suspended this week were "unblocked" from the governor's Facebook page Friday.

She said the entire governor's office staff is responsible for overseeing the Facebook page, adding: "The issue was discussed with the staff, and corrections have been made."

Some of the deleted comments veered into name-calling, but Barnes was among many who said theirs expressed respectful disagreement with Pence.

Those comments were among more than 1,000 made by Facebook users after the posting Wednesday of a statement by Pence responding to the two U.S. Supreme Court decisions concerning gay marriage.

One requires the federal government to recognize same-sex marriages performed in places where it's legal.

Indiana law says marriage is only between a man and a woman. Pence affirmed his support for that idea, and he joined some legislative leaders in renewing a push to place a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and civil unions on the 2014 ballot.

Government officials, according to legal experts, potentially risk running afoul of the U.S. Constitution if they remove critical comments with too heavy of a hand on a Facebook page that could be considered a public forum.

Pence said his office's still-developing standard of conduct for commenting on his Facebook page would be similar to policies used by other elected officials and news organizations.

Contributing: Chris Sikich of The Star