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Mother Sues After Bebo Story Hits Press
slick_shoes notes a story out of England: a woman named Amanda Hudson is suing six national newspapers for defamation and breach of privacy after they ran stories based on her 15-year-old daughter's exaggerated claims about her party, published on her Bebo site. The party was held at the family's £4m villa in Spain, and the daughter's account claimed that jewelery had been stolen and furniture and a television set thrown into the swimming pool; in addition there were claims of sex and drug use. The mother says that this was all falsehood and exaggeration. A number of newspapers picked up claims and photos from Bebo and ran them nationally. From the article: "The case is expected to have far-reaching consequences for third parties who use or publish information from social networking sites. Lawyers say it could place a duty on all second-hand users to establish the truth of everything they want to republish from such sites."
> Lawyers say it could place a duty on all second-hand users to establish the truth of everything they want to republish from such sites
Isn't that what newspaper reporters and editors are for?
The fact that some party thrown by a rich 15 year old girl is national news is kind-of depressing. Am I missing something?
Your privacy is invading our public.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I hope that they succeed. It would is nice to know that when they actually claim it is news, it is not a piece of fiction more in line with Harlequin romance novels.
"The party was held at the family's £4m villa in Spain, and the daughter's account claimed that jewelery had been stolen and furniture and a television set thrown into the swimming pool; in addition there were claims of sex and drug use. The mother says that this was all falsehood and exaggeration" Yeah. The villa is only worth £3.5m. And it was actually a DVD player that was thrown into the swimming pool. Oh and there was no drug use, only sex.
Hey, bitch - buy your daughter a damned dictionary and have her look up the meaning of the word "publish".
Then you look up the word "parent" and do your fucking job (hint - it doesn't involve suing a third party when your spawn does something stupid).
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
If they had written a story about the blog entry?
It seems to me that you couldnt possibly get in trouble for saying "According to her blog on myspace.com little suzy rich girls party got out of hand and someone threw a TV out the window"
I mean, thats certainly a true statement. If that would be acceptable to print without verifying the truth of the actual event then this isnt going to have much of an impact one way or another.
Personally I dont like the idea of a news paper regurgitating a blog as truth. Its one thing to refer to the blog, they way you might refer to another publication (ie "ABC news called florida for bush at 10:30").
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
The only relevant fact that newspapers needed to check was that it was actually the 15-year old daughter that put it up for the world to see. Other than that, as the legal guardian, if the mother didn't want her daughter to post this information, she should have been a better parent.
There might actually be a case others have against the mother for defamation of character, since she is responsible for the actions of her daughter, and her daughter might have defamed them.
I wish parents would stop blaming other people for their own failings. Until their children come off age, what the kids do and what happens to the kids is the parents' sole responsibility.
Bebo Babe's Barcelona Bash: Burglary, Buggery, Breaking
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Newspapers have always had the responsibility to verify their stories, why should that change simply because the information's off the web?
Although it's true the papers should have fact-checked... isn't the daughter ultimately the one responsible for the false information? I guess suing one's own, minor, daughter probably doesn't make the same ch-ching sound.
This includes geek bloggers, soccer moms and professional reporters. You post something with the impression that it is true and don't verify...then you should be help accountable. For example. A post recently posted ON slashdot that the RIAA MADE dell remove stereo output from some of its computers. Now it seems that it may not be so true, or again that is the rumor. If it is in fact found out to be of "no merit" that blogger/slashdot post SHOULD be found responsible for losses against dell & the riaa if they were able to make a case for that. Something to think about, just because you can doesn't mean you aren't responsible.
Publishing something does not make it a fact. It simply makes it published. If the information is not true, you can still get your pants sued off, as these newspapers are finding out.
That's why you should always check your sources. Learn to protect yourself from libel suits.
For the lady and her daughter - abject stupidity. Once you put something on the internet, it's there for life - if you don't realise this, you are not qualified to use the internet. Just as if yo don't realise cars can kill, if improperly driven, you have no business being behind the wheel.
For the newspapers - whatever happened to validating your sources? Is this something that only happens in the movies, or has the average rag descended to the point where all it does is reprint salacious and unverified fiction from all and any sources. They really do deserve to be sued out of existence in that case.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
"The case is expected to have far-reaching consequences for third parties who use or publish information from social networking sites. Lawyers say it could place a duty on all second-hand users to establish the truth of everything they want to republish from such sites."
Aren't journalists supposed to do this ANYWAY?
...in reporting? Maybe they do things differently in the UK, but certainly in the US, as Fox News demonstrated, there's no such legal requirement.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
From the article:
Too bad. When you publish stuff on the internet for all of the world to see it really undermines your privacy claims. Now, if this girl only allowed her stories to be seen by those she had designated as friends, then she might have a leg to stand on with respect to privacy.
Also, the defamation claim is curious. I haven't ever seen a case where the the originator of the false statements is the same person suing the newspapers for making false statements.
The paper has a duty to check facts that it publishes. How do they know that the 'daughter' publishing this information is really this woman's daughter at all, and not a jealous friend who wasn't invited?
Journalism has undergone a frightening shift in the last thirty years. Don't get me wrong: it has always been about selling eyes to the advertisers. But there used to be professional standards. People could take pride in saying they were a journalist. Journalists like Woodward and Bernstein were heroes protecting the public interest.
Now journalism is just another branch of the entertainment industry. Any sense of professional pride seems to be gone. Truth and accuracy don't matter.
It's not just stories like this, either. Journalists routinely slap their names on unedited press releases and call them stories without fact checking a damn thing. Politicians and businesses know that journalists are too lazy to do their jobs.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I would be very, very surprised to learn that they weren't having sex and using drugs. 15? Rich? Sheeeit.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
By US standards this case would likely be tossed out.
The first story I found from the Daily Mail included getting a response from the mother, quotes from other party goers, etc
Just because the mother denies (possibly criminal, depending on how hitting her daughter occurred and what the laws are regarding serving minors alcohol over there) the report doesn't mean it was defamation or they didn't do their jobs. Maybe the quotes were made up, and maybe the pictures from the girl's blog didn't show what they seemed to (teenagers paired up in bed, passed out drunk girls, young men/teenagers carrying beer around) but we shouldn't assume that.
According to wiki in the UK
The US uses a somewhat similar standard. If you've got claims by the daughter, quotes from friends of the mother, and from party goers (and these are not fabricated) then to me "due care" has probably been taken.
If my child ever hosted a party that just about destroyed my house, words couldn't describe the beating said child would endure. Plus he or she (no child as of yet) would definitely have to live with the grandparents for awhile.
And don't get all PC on me, I just don't care. My father kept me in line with fear of his hand, and I will do the same with my child.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
I think reliability of information posted by a teenage girl on Bebo ranks up there with BBC World News. How else would they fill ten minutes of their daily morning broadcast with news from Zimbabwe, while their nearest reporter is sitting in Johannesburg some 1200 miles away?
This could be a money making scam -
1) Post fake lurid posts on social networking site
2) wait for press to pick up on lurid posts
3) claim the posts are fake and sue for defamation.
4) Profit
No ??? needed.
At some point, somewhere, the entire internet will be found to be illegal.
before people learn not to post stories that they don't want the whole world reading? I hear stories like this time after time, and its always, "They should respect my privacy." Well, guess what... if you post information publicly over a global connection that EVERYONE has access to, then you have no privacy. That said, I do think the media are idiots for taking "credible" information from the social networking page of a 15 year old girl. I think that they should absolutely be held responsible, especially for a story that is so damaging to a person's character. There's a reporter somewhere that should be fired for this.
Its patently false. There are places that the limit is ridiculous (UK its 5 w/ a parent), less strict (many places in Europe its 16) or identical to the US. Other places, alcohol can only be purchased or consumed at certain times, or not at all.
Mrs Hudson said her daughter has also suffered greatly because of the breach of her privacy. "Jodie is 15 years old," she said. "She did not consent to the publication in the media of any photograph of her or her party, or of any material that she wrote on her Bebo site."
Looks like she learned about it the hard way. What you post on-line is public info.
Journalism's origins stem from the reporting of shiploads of trade goods and their arrival in port - particularly Venice and London. Advance knowledge of a ship and it's contents allowed the original speculators the opportunity to make a healthy profit. These sheets were circulated, certainly around London and Venice and it wasn't long before people used them to advertise.
Friends of the printers (to cut a long story short) often sent lengthy letters to each other, reporting on topical events (it was before the internet) especially wars. These letters were often printed verbatim hence the origin of the word 'correspondent'.
These reports were incredibly popular and garnered readership. Edward Mallet took the highly original step of editing them to fit the space between the ads, and the Daily Courant was born in the 1700's. Often these letters were reports of reports of reports - a bit like the internet!
Gradually this developed into an art form and it wasn't long before reporters were despatched to write the letters themselves. War, conflict, crime and punishment and scandal soon became the daily diet of millions of readers. Then Hollywood was invented and so was the world of entertainment. Gradually readers started to prefer entertainment to 'news' - and who wouldn't? I present exhibit one 'The Sun' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sun/ , which holds the world record for the highest readership of a single edition in the English language. This is closely followed by that masterpiece of twee entertainment published by DC Thomson 'The Sunday.Post' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sunday_Post/ including the immortal humour of 'Oor Wullie' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oor_Wullie/ Oor_Wullie and 'The Broons' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Broons/
So it shouldn't really surprise anyone that people like to be entertained and since the entertainment industry is the economic dynamo of the developed nations, we shouldn't really be surprised by the sudden revelation that newspapers are in the 'infotainment' business.
None of this is at all new, Evelyn Waugh, in 1938, lampooned the whole industry to hilarious effect in 'Scoop' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoop_(novel)/. The simple tests for 'news' is; "What is the origin of this report?" and: "Who benefits from it?" and the three eternal questions any journalist would ask any famous figure if they caught them in the elevator are: "How bad is it? Will it get any worse? And what are you going to do about". A healthy attitude of scepticism is an essential attri..
We interrupt this broadcast to bring you ** breaking news** direct from Lynwood, California where Paris Hilton has just been released from prison having served four days of a 40 day sentence... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Hilton/
Bias Disclaimer: I used to be a member of the NUJ and I used to teach this subject.
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This is what you get when you have multiple 24-hour news channels and lots of news web sites itching to have something new. There's only so much real news, and not enough of it to even fill one TV channel with content. So they have to dig for crap. This is what you get.
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If the newspapers liftet both story and pictures from the blog, then that's a clear case of "for profit" copyright infringment.
Just because you find a story and pictures on a blog doesn't mean that they are public domain !
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
When I worked as a reporter, people tried to use "off the record" like a magic phrase to redact my writing. All. The. Time.
I had a police officer tell me something like, "Yes, the state has been very helpful with this program. Off the record, they haven't done a dang thing." Of course I didn't quote either of his duplicitous remarks. I'm not going to help him lie.
When is it off the record? When we both agree ahead of time. When will we agree to that? When there's no other way for me to get the information. After all, off-the-record info is useless to me, except that it may help me to get printable info somewhere else.
Now, for inconsequential stuff, like when the city manager says he's irritated with a loud-mouthed council member, I don't have to print that. I don't want to clam the guy up to where he's afraid to say anything in front of me next time. But I certainly wouldn't promise to take anything off the record that anybody wants, just because they said the magic words after the fact. If you're talking to a reporter, you should expect that it's on the record. Making the record is his/her job.