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.'"

Comments

Re:No sympathy

[Anonymous Coward]

The girl died because she committed suicide. She chose to end her life. Basically, she was mentally ill.

Did you read the fucking story? Do you know what happened? Since in typical slashdot fashion you jump to conclusions before understanding any background, here's a nutshell since you'll probably not read the link anyway.

Try the local paper in the town involved.

Basically a teenage girl, who suffered from depression, ADD, and weight issues, met an online friend Josh in myspace. for 6 weeks she'd talk to him. One day he immediately stopped being 'nice' and started saying she was fat, she's a slut, and the world would be better without her.

Immediately after getting these emails Megan was hysterical, her father tried to calm her down, and 20 minutes later she was found in her room where she hung herself. Do you really think an entirely different event happened in that interim time that instead led to her suicide?

The major outrage here is that this Josh kid never existed, but was the ADULT MOTHER of one of Megan's former friends down the street. Moreover, this woman KNEW about Megan's depression. What kind of sick twisted adult fucks around with a teenager, specifically one that is depressed and has weight issues?

You claim that breaking up with a psycho before they kill themselves is the same thing as fucking with a persons head, pretending to be a fellow teenager and gaining her trust and then telling her she's a slut and fat, knowing that the person was depressed and had weight issues to begin with?

Re:No sympathy

[heinousjay]

No, not really. And fuck you nanny staters who want me to be. The emotional state of another human being is only my responsibility if I want it to be. Someone else's lack of stability is their problem. If they might be tipped over the edge by me, then they should be removed from society, plain and simple. We don't adjust the whole to the one, we adjust the one to the whole.