March 26, 2008Anonymous speech onlineAn interesting article looking at blogs and online posts from a legal perspective. Should bloggers and other online material incorporate more accountability? What about in light of the controversy over the gossip website juicycampus.com? |
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March 26, 2008
Anonymous speech online
An interesting article looking at blogs and online posts from a legal perspective. Should bloggers and other online material incorporate more accountability? What about in light of the controversy over the gossip website juicycampus.com?
Comments
[March 26, 2008 6:44 PM]
Ed S.I don't quite understand the uproar over this particular site. Something so obviously stupid deserves this much attention?
[March 26, 2008 11:14 PM]
Hank BostwickThe linked article from The First Amendment Center focuses this wide-ranging issue into nicely digestible chunks. One area Hudson fails to parse carefully is the use of hyperole and satire by political bloggers or "writers," as the author insists.
Consider, for instance, the connections that bloggers often draw between loosely-related events and the politicians they wish to skewer. For example, Not Larry Sabato (NLS), a NoVA blogger, broke the George Allen "Macaca" story and used Allen's off-color, no pun intended, cat-call to suggest that he is a life-long, clandestine racist. Maybe he is, but that isn't the point. Should the author of the post at NLS be subject to civil liability for drawing those tenuous connections and, perhaps, costing Allen the election? Of course not.
Remember the bloggers who revealed the bogus evidence used in a 60-Minutes news story regarding GWB's National Guard service, or lack thereof, in Alabama? Often, the blogosphere can serve as a check on the corporate-driven mainstream media, that many bloggers lovingly refer to as the MSM.
Sites like juicygossip.com above are simply extensions of our innate voyeuristic tendencies and our attraction to public displays of the failings of others. UVa should be commended for "condemning" juicygossip.
But censoring or holding an anonymous, prurient, mudraking site like juicygossip civilly liable, well, as passionately as we may feel about our right to privacy and the integrity of our reputations, the First Amendment should trump all those concerns.
[March 27, 2008 2:39 AM]
Ed HEverybody is all for freedom of speech until something damaging gets posted about them.
Best remedy I can think of for "too much free speech" is MORE free speech. Make sure the person talked about is aware of it. Expose the identity of the defamer.
[March 27, 2008 8:07 AM]
HenryNewspapers HATE anonymous opinion UNLESS they are skewering the people they hate. "An unnamed source in the White House told us....". This happens in other media as well.
During Iran-Contra, NPR was running a story every day on the latest rumors circulating in Washington about who was going to resign and who was going to be indicted, etc. When Clintons problems broke, NPR suddenly decided they didn't participate in rumor mongering.
Everyone loves an anonymous source if it agrees with them. But anonymous sources that skewer Democrats and liberals will never be accepted by the MSM.
[March 27, 2008 10:20 PM]
JoshThe New York Times hit piece of McCain where it implied an affair is a perfect example of a so-called "venerable" leftwing institution using unnamed sources to trash it's ideological opposition.
I think I remember the leftwing TV media circling the wagons and telling us we need to wait and see what further details emerge which might validate the NYT story.
We're still waiting.