Journalists Can't Hide News From the Internet

Hugh Pickens writes "Robert Niles at the Online Journalism Review discusses the issues surrounding the recent tragedy involving a MySpace user. A newspaper reporting on the story didn't name the woman, citing concerns for her teen daughter. Bloggers went nuts, and soon uncovered the woman's personal information. Niles writes: 'The lessons for journalists? First, we can't restrict access to information anymore. The crowd will work together to find whatever we withhold ... Second, I wonder if that the decision to withhold the other mother's name didn't help enflame the audience, by frustrating it and provoking it to do the work of discovering her identity.'"

there wasn't going to be a trial

[circletimessquare]

and there is fuzziness about guilt here, the perpetrator is known and fixed

the local da was not going to press charges

with all the heat, they say now they are going to review the case

given that, the victim's parents decided to go public, against the advice of their lawyers, for exactly this effect: wide public knowledge and shaming of the perpetrator, and to warn people about what kind of mainpulations can go on

Re:Whatever, stalking mods

[Zarhan]

When someone posts your address online over an alleged crime or slight, and you're the one whose tires are slashed or who has to confront a crazed gunman breaking down your door, you'll understand.

Has this happened to you or anyone you know? If not, stop the fearmongering.

There were several cases in Britain where The Sun or other quality magazines started to publish pictures of pedophiles. Too bad if you happened to look like the guy. Chances were you were soon hurting.

But of course, the lynch mob can also be just a tad stupid - but what can you do if you're the one running from it: British vigilantes mistake a pediatrician for a pedophile [salon.com].

The story isn't cut and dried. RTFA!

[renbear]

More information from a less hysterical view (compared to the bloggers' accounts) is available at http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/11/17/internet.suicide.ap/index.html [cnn.com]. There's also a video clip including an interview with Megan's parents.

This is a pretty messed up situation. The woman mentioned in the article summary is the mother of an ex-friend of Megan (the girl that committed suicide), and posed as a boy ("Josh") on MySpace trying to keep tabs on what Megan was saying about her daughter (Megan's ex-friend).

Whether the woman created the "Josh" account is not up for debate-- it's from the police report*. Likewise, whether she pretended to be interested in the 14-year-old girl is not debatable. What is debatable is whether she was the person logged in to the "Josh" account when the taunting messages were sent, especially given three people from her family posed as "Josh", and were complicit in the deceit. Complicating matters, Megan's mother said the Wrong Thing At The Wrong Time to Megan, by the mother's account, minutes before the suicide. (It's abundantly clear she will never forgive herself for this.)

As I said, it's pretty messed up. Were the mainstream media right in concealing the identity of the woman? I'm not so sure. It seems to me that too many times identities have been concealed, preventing true community backlash against perpetrators. It's clear the woman was at least partially culpable-- she didn't accidentally make the Josh character fall in love with Megan. On the other hand, the local community is already shunning the woman and her family, so is Internet Outrage really accomplishing any more?

* Unintentionally leaked by CNN, and transcribed by a blogger using frame capture.

Re:Whatever, stalking mods

[S.O.B.]

Has this happened to you or anyone you know? If not, stop the fearmongering.

How about Richard Jewell [wikipedia.org]? And this was the responsible media that did this to an innocent man. Imagine if that happened today with the virtual lynch mob of bloggers that are out there.

Re:Whatever, stalking mods

[pallmall1]

When someone posts your address online over an alleged crime or slight...

When Curt and Lori Drew filed charges against the Meiers (the victim's parents) for destroying the foosball table that they had asked (after their sick "prank" had driven the Meiers' daughter to suicide) the Meiers to store in their house, they put their own names out in public. Read the story [stltoday.com]. When the Meiers learned of the Drews' direct involvement in causing the death of their daughter, they busted up the foosball table and dumped it on the Drews' lawn. The Drews then had the gall to file charges for property damage against the Meiers. In the police report, Lori Drew said she kind of felt bad until she found out at Megan's funeral that Megan was unstable and may have attempted suicide in the past. That made her feel better. Holy cow! That's lower than snake shit.

Again, if the Drews hadn't filed charges against the Meiers for destroying the foosball table, it would have been harder to find out who they were. The Drews put themselves on the official public record.

That must have been one killer foosball table, because the Sheriff, the DA, and the Drews all think it's worth more than Megan Meiers life.

Re:jokes on them

[Colin Smith]

And some folks wonder why Slashdot posters do so anonymously, or use aliases.

Not everyone.

 

These people weren't outed.

[pallmall1]

Read the story [stltoday.com], and note who filed a police report. They put themselves on the public record a long time ago.

Re:There should be a law against people who do thi

[Eivind Eklund]

In Norway, we have that limitation: The media is not allowed to divulge the identity of an accused, unless the person is already a public person or there is another compelling reason (suspicion of false arrest would likely be counted as one).

We do not seem to have much of a problem with false arrests; the only problems I know of are the usual ones of the prosecution sometimes going "gung ho" (wanting to convict SOMEBODY no matter what, to save face) and occasional abuse of the "Police can put somebody in detention for 24 hour before pressing charges". Overall, it seems to work fine, and the hiding of identity from media publication seems to only be positive.

Eivind.

Re:There should be a law against people who do thi

[hedwards]

The public's right to know what government is up to and free speech.

Except the public doesn't have the right to know everything that happens. That is often times cited when a journalist wants to go on a fishing expedition for embarrassing things that celebrities may have done. Which usually is that a couple are sleeping around or may be getting married really isn't something that the public has a right to know about.

The essence of the publics' right to know is about public issues and the portion of private ones which would enable them to be better informed on the way that public policy should be formed or how to avoid somebody else's tragic mistake. Neither of those are served by finding the name of those that weren't already named in the article.

Its soft news journalism that reports on things which wouldn't be interesting had it been done by normal every day people.

In this case, I think that the bloggers in this case ought to feel really badly about having engaged in this sort of shenanigans. At this point, the woman had been reported to the sheriff's office, and there is a possible suit in the future. What they've done is managed to harm everybody involved in this that isn't already dead. Even then, I get the feeling that they would have pissed on her grave if they thought that could make a better story.