February
17How to Combat “Cyber Sliming”
Andrew Sullivan wrote a superb essay in the Atlantic not long ago explaining his addiction to blogdom. “Truth is inherently transitory in blogging,” he wrote. “Bloggers and their readers must keep in mind that blogging is to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free form, more accident prone. Blogging is writing out loud.”
Sullivan’s comments aptly describe why I enjoy blogs and also distrust them.
Editors of the New York Times.com have been ulcerating about some of their exercises in instant journalism, such as an item attacking Caroline Kennedy when she was seeking a Senate seat in New York. Their story seemed to give credence to anonymous rumors that she had nanny and tax problems, which turned out not to be the case.
The web provides the opportunity to get out the news, and sometimes get it wrong, the Times concluded.
Arguably the noise from blogdom created a degree of panic in Los Angeles last week over the decision to close the acute care hospital and long-term care facility of the Motion Picture Home. Again, the impact of the “instant news” was to build an impression that all or most services would be eliminated. In fact, the Fund will continue to provide health care services to almost 65,000 patients that use its six health care centers and will also maintain its Wasserman Campus and its Goldwyn Center, among other facilities.
One blogger, David Poland, provided the valuable service of clocking, hour by hour, the various bloggers and online journalists attacking and contradicting one another on this issue. To borrow Andrew Sullivan’s metaphor, the entire blogging community seemed to be “writing out loud.” The net effect was to convolute an already confusing situation.
Character assassinations and cyber-bullying have become so pervasive in blogdom that they have spawned a growing body of litigation. Portfolio Magazine’s March issue runs a list of companies you can contact if you’ve been the victim of “online sliming” – Reputation Hawk and Reputation Defender, among them. The magazine warns that operators have immunity under the Communications Decency Act of 1996, but that anonymous attackers can be sued directly once their identity is determined.
The basic problem: There is such a craving for attention in blogdom that bloggers spend too much time attacking rather than illuminating.
Sullivan’s comments aptly describe why I enjoy blogs and also distrust them.
Editors of the New York Times.com have been ulcerating about some of their exercises in instant journalism, such as an item attacking Caroline Kennedy when she was seeking a Senate seat in New York. Their story seemed to give credence to anonymous rumors that she had nanny and tax problems, which turned out not to be the case.
The web provides the opportunity to get out the news, and sometimes get it wrong, the Times concluded.
Arguably the noise from blogdom created a degree of panic in Los Angeles last week over the decision to close the acute care hospital and long-term care facility of the Motion Picture Home. Again, the impact of the “instant news” was to build an impression that all or most services would be eliminated. In fact, the Fund will continue to provide health care services to almost 65,000 patients that use its six health care centers and will also maintain its Wasserman Campus and its Goldwyn Center, among other facilities.
One blogger, David Poland, provided the valuable service of clocking, hour by hour, the various bloggers and online journalists attacking and contradicting one another on this issue. To borrow Andrew Sullivan’s metaphor, the entire blogging community seemed to be “writing out loud.” The net effect was to convolute an already confusing situation.
Character assassinations and cyber-bullying have become so pervasive in blogdom that they have spawned a growing body of litigation. Portfolio Magazine’s March issue runs a list of companies you can contact if you’ve been the victim of “online sliming” – Reputation Hawk and Reputation Defender, among them. The magazine warns that operators have immunity under the Communications Decency Act of 1996, but that anonymous attackers can be sued directly once their identity is determined.
The basic problem: There is such a craving for attention in blogdom that bloggers spend too much time attacking rather than illuminating.
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