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

if only there were charges

[circletimessquare]

the family of the teenager that killed herself kept it quiet for a long time, and, against the advice of their lawyer, decided to go public with it. and they went public with it only when the local decided not to press charges

the press and the blogs went apeshit. and rightfully so: this vile perp was not going to be charged with anything

now, because of all of this heat, the da is reviewing their decision not to press charges

so if people don't want street justice, mob justice, and all of this extrajudicial outrage, then courts of law must register justice

the error was not pressing charges on the woman who perpetrated this vile crime. if charges were pressed against her, none of this online hoopla would have ever happened

relatively trivial case

[doom]

This seems like a relatively trivial case to use to start making pronouncements like "journalists can't hide from the internet".

Now, if internet bloggers managed to prevent the Bush regime from manipulating the US into attacking Iran in the same way that they got the US into Iraq, that would be something to be proud of.

Hell, it would be great if they could just get the mainstream media to stop referring to Denis Kucinich as some sort of crazy extremist because he's advocating what most of the US citizenry wants...

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

[ShieldW0lf]

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.

I don't think the public has the right to have the government protect their secrets from other members of the public. As a member of the public, I may not have the right to know everything, but I will try to do it anyways, and try to help others do it. I think misleading the public should be a capital offense, and it should be the responsibility of every citizen to assist in ferreting out liars and putting them to death by their own hand.

And if you're in opposition, I have no problem having a biblical style rock fight to the death with you either, just on principle.