Blogger's Publishing Responsibility: Speech at The Korea Society

Here is me talking recently at The Korea Society about a blogger's responsibility as a publisher (with a little story to illustrate):

Online Identity Management

Matthew Hennessey reported last November on the case of Megan Meier, a 13-year-old who committed suicide after receiving bullying messages from someone she thought was another teenager named Josh. “Josh” turned out to be Meier’s 47-year-old neighbor, Lori Drew.

Someone later used Drew’s identity to publish a blog entitled “Megan Had It Coming,” purporting to be Drew’s self-defense outlet:

Yes, I made this blog. Yes, I’m Lori Drew… Now that Mr. Banas has made public the announcement that there will be no charges filed against me or my family, I feel it is time to speak out about this tragic affair. I cannot count on any media organization to fairly represent my story, as they have grossly misrepresented and sensationalized the story so far. So, I must present my case here, on the blog that has been my only outlet…

(The original post has been taken down, but is copied in part here.)

The Ethical Blogger experienced something similar when it came to our attention that several comments submitted to our site were posted not only by an individual pretending to be someone else, but with the obvious intent to slander. The comments were often strange and in many cases only tangentially relevant to the topic being discussed. The body of the posts were signed using two names. While the comments struck the blog administrator as unusual, nothing about them was explicitly derogatory or inflammatory.

Only when we received a phone call from the party whose name was signed to the post did we begin investigating. The pen name was linked to a Blogger profile that was in turn linked to two Blogger hosted blogs. A quick analysis of the nature and content of the blogs revealed that both they and the comments posted on our blog were intended to smear the reputation of the party whose name was signed to the post.

A Google search of the names signed to the posts revealed a pattern of comments on other blogs that, in light of the phone complaint, seemed consistent with the poster’s intent to discredit the party whose name was signed to the post.

Using someone’s identity in an attempt to damage the person’s reputation is clearly unethical, but what are the legal implications?

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Legal Guide for Bloggers, the US Supreme Court has ruled that blogs have the same constitutional protections as mainstream media as concerns defamation. And those protections are dependent on the context in which the comment was made:

For a blog, a court would likely start with the general tenor, setting, and format of the blog, as well as the context of the links through which the user accessed the particular entry. Next the court would look at the specific context and content of the blog entry, analyzing the extent of figurative or hyperbolic language used and the reasonable expectations of the blog's audience.

More details are available here.

Google is reported to have handed over the IP address of an anonymous blogger in Israel (after the blogger failed to appear in court) for defamation after comments were posted on Blogger suggesting that members of the Shaarei Tikva Council take bribes and have links to organized crime.

No charges that we know of were pressed against the Ethical Blogger commenter.

Comments not intended to harm can still damage a person’s reputation. Whether or not the law applies, individuals and companies can turn to firms specializing in online identity management.
From ReputationDefender’s website:

First we SEARCH… Next we DESTROY…

Our trained and expert online reputation specialists use an array of techniques developed in-house to correct and/or completely remove the selected unwanted content from the web. This is an important and time-consuming task, but we take the job seriously so you can sleep better at night.

Blogger Garrett Graff to Speak at Carnegie Council

Hey Ethical Bloggers,

One more announcement: For those of you living in the New York City area, the Carnegie Council would like to invite you to a Dec. 6 evening talk by Garrett Graff, the first blogger to be admitted to cover a White House press briefing.

To attend, please sign up here. (There is a fee to attend.)

Here is the information:

The Carnegie Council presents:

A discussion of “The First Campaign: Globalization, the Web, and the Race for the White House”

with

Garrett M. Graff

Thursday, December 6, 2007
5:30pm – 7:00pm
Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs
Merrill House
170 East 64th Street
New York, NY 10065-7478

The emergence of the Web as a political tool has shaken up the campaign process, leaving front-runners vulnerable right up until Election Day. How will the two major parties take advantage of this new technology? And how instrumental will technology be in deciding the outcome of the 2008 Presidential campaign?

Garrett M. Graff is editor-at-large at Washingtonian Magazine and covers media and politics. He was also the founding editor of mediabistro.com’s Fishbowl D.C. (www.fishbowldc.com), a blog that covers the media and journalism in Washington. As the first blogger admitted to cover a White House press briefing, he is a frequent speaker on blogging and the intersection of politics and technology. He served as deputy national press secretary on Howard Dean's presidential campaign and, beginning in 1997, was then-Governor Dean's first webmaster.

Presentations begin at 5:30 PM, followed by a question-and-answer session at 6:00 PM and a reception from 6:30 to 7:00 PM.

NYU Center Joins Ethical Blogger Project

Dear Ethical Bloggers,

As you may have noticed, New York University’s Center for Global Affairs joined the roster of institutions participating in the Ethical Blogger Project. We are seeking additional institutions worldwide, so if you have suggestions, please let us know. Please send ideas to Devin Stewart at the Carnegie Council or post them on this blog. The plan is to convene meetings around the world to engage publics in every region on this topic over the course of the next two years.

We are very encouraged that a part of the NYU community, with its global reach and superb academic reputation in law, media, business, and international relations has joined us.

Here is the announcement:

NYU’s Center for Global Affairs (CGA) is pleased to join the Ethical Blogger Project, a collaboration created by Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies, the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, Demos—The Think Tank for Everyday Democracy, and Oxford University's Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

Launched in the heart of lower Manhattan in 2004 on a tradition of global affairs education begun in 1984, the Center for Global Affairs at NYU facilitates change by educating and inspiring its community to become global citizens capable of identifying and implementing solutions to pressing global challenges. Through rigorous graduate and non–degree programs and provocative public events, the CGA prepares global citizens who will be at home–and thus be effective agents of change–in diverse environments around the world.

“We founded the Center for Global Affairs on the principle that ‘global’ and ‘international’ are different in important ways,” says Vera Jelinek, CGA divisional dean. “Understanding these differences informs our mission of creating global citizens and demands that we engage our community in a deep and meaningful examination of ethics at every level. The Ethical Blogger Project focuses a critical spotlight on ethics and new media and is a perfect fit for our students and our mission. We are delighted to engage in this exciting project with such outstanding peer institutions.”

For more information on the Center for Global Affairs, please visit the site or call 212.992.8380.

November 27, 2007
New York University
New York, NY

Syria blocks access to Facebook

In my last post, I mentioned the wonderful site Global Voices Online -- a sort of clearinghouse for international blogs. The site "aggregates, curates, and amplifies the global conversation online – shining light on places and people other media often ignore."

And fair play to them.

At the top of Global Voices tonight is this post from Amira Al Hussaini, detailing the censorship in Syria of the social networking site Facebook. (Access to Google's Blogger, which hosts The Ethical Blogger, is also blocked in Syria.) Hussaini links us to the Syrian blogger Golaniya, who claims to be "neither an 'Arab' nor a 'Syrian', not even a 'female'." She blogs "for the right to be a citizen."

What follows is bold, brave and truly inspiring.

...recently there has been a cultural awakening [in Syria]; people are starting to organize their interests in concerts, galleries, conferences, plays, screenings…etc. and Facebook is facilitating the process which is very hard to do in an inactive militarily controlled society. There are no cultural institutions in Syria, no private independent NGOs, no civic institutions, who represent the populations except the government? Syrian Facebookers are trying now to represent themselves. Those who cannot be activists in a "real" Syria can be one in a virtual Syria. Facebook is becoming a tool to bring together these very individuals to promote their socially, religiously and politically prohibited thoughts. We are not talking about blocking of a social networking tool, we are talking about blocking an awareness networking tool, a chance to express, to finally speak and do something about it. It's high time to demand our right to seek ALL and ANY information regardless of its source, we have the mind to decide for ourselves what we should/should not read or believe.We have the right to organize ourselves and activate our numb citizenship. We want to be socially and politically active. We want to campaign for human rights, we want to be civilians instead of abstract "Syrians," instead of mere Muslims and Christians. We want to engage in building our nation. We don’t want to be permitted to act; we want to be voluntarily and spontaneously acting. We want to be doers and actors. We want Syria uncensored!

As we discourse here on the appropriate use of profanity and anonymity in fora such as this, it is perhaps worth reminding ourselves that freedom of expression remains out of reach in some corners of the globe.

As Ian Bremmer points out so eloquently in his book The J Curve, authoritarian regimes rely heavily on state control of the media to keep the citizenry in the dark.

...the slightest influence on their citizens from the outside could push the most rigid...states toward instability. If half the people of North Korea saw 20 minutes of CNN (or of al Jazeera for that matter), they would realize how egregiously their government lies to them about life beyond the walls. That realization would provoke widespread social upheaval. The slightest improvement in the ability of a country’s citizens to communicate with one another—the introduction of telephones, email, or text-messaging into an authoritarian state—can likewise undermine the state’s monopoly on information.

No doubt the Syrian regime feels mortally threatened by the latent power of sites such as Facebook. It is not hard to see how easily the political opposition in Syria (such as it is) could leverage these sites, both at home and abroad, to destabilize the government of Bashar al-Assad. Even the lowliest technology (think of the role of the cassette tape in the Iranian revolution of 1979) can conceivably be employed to illuminate "life behind the walls."

We should acknowledge and commend the brave struggle of dissidents such as Golaniya.

Transparency for the Blogosphere?

Clearly anonymity has its place in the blogosphere and Web 2.0. In my opinion, anonymity is most justified when the author is writing in a country in which the government doesn’t represent the citizens. In other words, the politically oppressed or censored are justified in writing anonymously.

On the other end of the spectrum, however, writers who spread rumors about political candidates in democracies are much less justified in writing anonymously. Whenever possible, I sign my name to the comments I post on a blog. People, some sponsored by political money, spreading rumors about candidates is thought to be one of the most egregious ethical violations on the Internet. Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, agrees.

We launched the Ethical Blogger Project in part because we anticipated the viciousness of the political debate to increase to unprecedented levels as the 2008 U.S. Presidential elections approach. We use the word “blog” broadly to cover participatory media on the Internet. Also, if we can remind bloggers and the Web 2.0 community in general to behave decently, we can stave off government regulation of the Internet. In other words, let’s try to avoid a situation in which a few bad apples spoil the Web for everyone.

It looks like our premise was correct. Wired magazine reports that candidates are already under attack on YouTube. See “Hillary Clinton Faces a Viral-Video 'Truth-Boating'” by Sarah Lai Stirland. The article reports on a video, titled “The Shocking Video Hillary Does NOT Want You To See!” circulating around the Internet that charges that the Democratic frontrunner “underreported campaign contributions to the Federal Election Commission.” The video is complete with dark, scary music at appropriate moments and is presented in interview style—Peter Paul, the video’s creator, interviews himself.

The Wired article describes the “colorful past” of the video’s creator: “He was convicted of scamming Fidel Castro in the late 1970s, and later of traveling with a fake identity. Most recently he pleaded guilty in 2005 to manipulating the stock price of his internet company Stan Lee Media, which he co-founded with the famous comic-book king.”

Republican candidates aren’t safe from attack on the Internet either. As the article mentions, Rudolf Giuliani has been criticized by firefighters and others. Should we be looking into the political contributions made by the firefighters’ families? If there is a political agenda, does it disqualify their views?

The credibility, motive, and accountability of sources of information on the Internet are the issues here. Thanks to the Wired article, we know more about the background of the author of the Hillary video. But what about authors that remain anonymous? And to what degree should we check the background of a blogger or author on Web 2.0? What can we learn from journalism? A newspaper reader might assume that the newspaper company vets its writers, but should we worry about the motives or backgrounds of journalists?

A more credible blogger should get more traffic, thereby creating a virtuous cycle of increasing the influence of his or her blog. The Ethical Blogger Project also hopes to showcase ethical bloggers so that they might act as an example for others.