2- Why Blogs Are an Open Door

8/10/2019 2- Why Blogs Are an Open Door

1/7

http://bjr.sagepub.com

British Journalism Review

DOI: 10.1177/09564748070809452007; 18; 41British Journalism Review

Kim FletcherWhy blogs are an open door

http://bjr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/18/2/41 The online version of this article can be found at:

Published by:

http://www.sagepublications.com

can be found at:British Journalism ReviewAdditional services and information for

http://bjr.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts:

http://bjr.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:

http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:

by per seus on October 31, 2008http://bjr.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://bjr.sagepub.com/cgi/alertshttp://bjr.sagepub.com/cgi/alertshttp://bjr.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://bjr.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://bjr.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.navhttp://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.navhttp://bjr.sagepub.com/http://bjr.sagepub.com/http://bjr.sagepub.com/http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://bjr.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://bjr.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts


2/7

Reporters always faced two hurdles on the death knock. The rst wasgetting over the doorstep. The second was laying hands on the family album.I never found the second as bad as the rst: if you could only get in the house,it wasnt so hard to turn the talk to the physical appearance of the late spouseor child and the question that followed: You dont have a picture, do you? Afew platitudes about the smiling face in the holiday snap and the big moment:Could I borrow this? Then, with luck, you would be away, job done, tryingnot to think about the pain left in your wake.

Nowadays its possible to pick up a picture without going out of theofce, thanks to the millions who present themselves to public gaze on theinternet. Helpful quotes are available too. The famous and the unknown putup their lives for scrutiny on social networking sites such as MySpace andFacebook, offering photos, diaries and descriptions of their interests andtheir friends. If anything should happen that makes them interesting to awider public an untimely death, a reported involvement in a crime, someinjudicious email at work those self-portraits and life stories are available to

any journalist who trawls the sites.This was the journalistic shortcut used after Seung-Hui Cho shot dead 32

staff and fellow students at the American university Virginia Tech in April,as the media around the world discovered not only that local bloggers wereputting up graphic accounts of what had happened, but also that they couldpull details of some of the dead from the students own web pages, posted onsocial sites. As The Daily TelegraphsShane Richmond explained to websitereaders: It should be part of every journalists tool kit. All of us should know

how to search Technorati, Flickr, YouTube, MySpace etc. But, as Richmondalso acknowledged, this initiative raises questions: is it safe to lift stuff off

Why blogs arean open door Kim Fletcher

Kim Fletcher; DOI: 10.1177/0956474807080945; [2007/6] 18:2; 41-46; http://bjr.sagepub.com

http://bjr.sagepub.com/http://bjr.sagepub.com/http://bjr.sagepub.com/http://bjr.sagepub.com/


3/7

the web in this manner? Is it ethical to do so? Many who put the stuff up in therst place say it isnt, not least the actress Gillian Anderson, who was upset tond thoughts written for her ofcial website broadcast to a larger audience.She wrote later: The fact is, I have not written to the site in a while because I

have quite frankly been afraid to. I was shocked or rather appalled that mylast entry of ramblings was published. What happened? When didEverything and Everything become mass public consumption? Since whenhave I been writing a BLOG!!??? What happened to PERMISSION??!! I am sonaive. So, needless to say, I am a bit aumoxed, ummoxed, autter? Angry,about the situation and what is safe to write about anymore.

The tone is typical of the way people write on websites. And I should saythat I, too, am transgressing the rule laid out by Ms Anderson at the start of

her piece. It reads: NOTE: This message is exclusively for Gillians fans whovisit this web site. Please do not publish the contents (partially or in full)anywhere else on or off the internet. It should be said that this is not awarning calculated to work with journalists. But Ms Anderson is by nomeans alone among web users in believing that websites should be accorded aprivate status never granted to the published word elsewhere. The debatewill increase as journalists realise how much information is out there.

The likely suspect We saw the dramatic effect of web material during the inquiry into the

murders of ve prostitutes in Ipswich, Suffolk, at the end of last year, whenpolice arrested a former special constable, Tom Stephens. He had alreadyattracted media interest, having described himself as a likely suspect in aninterview with the Sunday Mirror , and given an interview to the BBC abouthis relationship with the dead women. Stephens was arrested shortly

afterwards, at which point there was joy among the media to discover hisentry on MySpace.

In the old days, reporters would have pieced together something of hischaracter by tramping round relatives and friends prepared to talk. Theymight have come up with a few pictures, typically years out of date.Naturally, the door-stepping began. But, thanks to MySpace, they had forstarters pictures of the suspect alongside the kind of self-description thateveryone knows spells serial killer: he called himself The Bishop, wore an

army combat hat and wrote that he was interested in keeping t. Conclusive,except that Stephens was, of course, released by police shortly afterwards

B r i t i s h

J o u

r n a

l i s m

R e v

i e w

v o l . 1

8 n

o . 2

j u n e 2 0 0 7



4/7

and another man is now awaiting trial. Context makes a difference. WhenStephens was under arrest his self-portraits looked just the kind a weirdowould put up. Once he was released they didnt look much different frommillions of others posted by young men and women on the internet.

Was it safe to lift his prole off the web? Yes the Tom Stephens selectedfrom the various Tom Stephens on MySpace was the right one. There wasenough detail in his prole for there to be no doubt about that. Did hiswebsite entry convey an accurate impression of him? Well, as accurate as themedia might have obtained from friends and acquaintances in the old days.They were, after all, merely reproducing what he said about himself.

The point about identication is important, because not only are theremany people of the same name on sites such as MySpace, there are also

entries set up by people purporting to be others. Now that MySpace is ownedby News Corp, there are lots of spoof proles claiming to be the News Corpboss Rupert Murdoch. Here is a typical one: I purchased Myspace for$580,000,000 in July... but the news didnt really cover that story. I am worthbillions. Jealous? You can also quickly nd any number of George Bushes,Tony Blairs and David Camerons. I think the site purporting to be that of theDuchess of York is genuine. Certainly, the sites of those of her daughters,Beatrice and Eugenie, were, until the media took an interest and reported the

contents. As a spokesman for the Duke of York told theDaily Mail : The girlsdont use MySpace any more. They think its a bit too open. They are nowusing Facebook. Spoofs are easy enough to spot when they involve thefamous, but the young users of these sites are not above faking others entriestoo.

Providing you have the right person, the journalistic rule surely must bethat you apply the same journalistic standards as you would to any otherinquiry. Even when they are writing about themselves, people do not

necessarily tell the truth. Just as journalists weigh the evidence of friends andneighbours rather than report it as a matter of fact, so the material onwebsites might not be as accurate as it appears. Or, seen in the cold light of day after the death of the person concerned, it may take on a greatersignicance than is warranted. There was evidence of that in another casewhere journalists trawled the internet for information about a youngstudent, and to report the comments of his friends. Here, there was little todistinguish the MySpace entry of Gavin Britton, a rst-year student at

Exeter University, from those of other students who boasted that they likedto drink heavily. Like them, he posted pictures of himself with glass in hand.

B r i t i s h

J o u

r n a

l i s m

R e v

i e w

v o l . 1

8 n

o . 2

j u n e 2 0 0 7



5/7

When he was found dead after a student party last autumn, the BasingstokeGazettequickly found his entry on the site:

Gavin boasted of his drinking on the Net and died on party night, ranthe headline. The story provided more detail gleaned from MySpace: One of

the comments he had left on the page was: If youre not living life on theedge, youre taking up too much space. The website also contains pictures of Gavin drinking, including one in fancy dress, from a wine bottle.

There was an angry reaction from many of his friends, whose commentsremain on the Gazettewebsite: It disgusts me that a couple of images on aninternet prole site, and some off-the-cuff comments posted on said website,have gathered so much media attention. It is a known fact by all MySpaceusers that anything said on such a site should be taken with a pinch of salt or

as light humour. But was the Gazette really taking the dead mans light-hearted comments about drinking out of context? After all, he did die afterdrinking. Perhaps if the information had been gathered in the old fashionway, friends would have qualied their accounts of his drinking with the riderthat he was no different from many other students. But wasnt the juxtaposition of website entry and manner of death irresistible to anynewspaper story? I suspect that Brittons friends would have reacted againstany story that raised his boasts about drinking, but the fact that the Gazettereached for his own words appeared to exacerbate criticism. There is a viewamong those writing blogs or using these social networking sites that,despite their easy accessibility, they are not actually public.

Blogs are public placesIn the aftermath of the Virginia Tech massacre, for instance, there was

anger among many who had written blogs about the event, or entered

comments on other sites, that the mainstream media had reproducedinformation from sites or posted comments on site in an attempt to solicitfurther information. The implication was that these sites were open to beread, yet were not in the public domain or not in the public domain for journalists, at any rate. In the words of Guardian journalist Patrick Barkham,who worked on the Virginia Tech story: Incredibly, some bloggers dontseem to grasp that blogs are public places, where people go of their own freewill to publish and share information, understanding that their comments

will be read around the world. Journalists do grasp that point, which is why they have started to use

B r i t i s h

J o u

r n a

l i s m

R e v

i e w

v o l . 1

8 n

o . 2

j u n e 2 0 0 7



6/7

these social sites as a means of publishing information that they could nototherwise nd a way into. The News of the World presented a colourful pieceabout a girlfriend of Tony Blairs oldest son, Euan, justifying the informationand pictures by explaining where they had come from: The News of the World

discovered hundreds of photographs of 19-year-old Suzanne on the internet all posted by herself on student networking site Facebook.com. You canimagine the happiness in the heart of the journalist when he looked at thosepictures, conscious that the Press Complaints Commission could not touchthe paper on privacy grounds.

The Mail , following up the story next day, also took trouble to emphasisethat this was in the public domain. Writing under the headline: How Euansgirl revealed her wild side on the web, it wrote: The Facebook.com photos

were posted on an area of the website accessible to all Oxford Universitystudents. The nature of the website also means that anyone with an onlinefriend at Oxford was also able to access the pictures. The subtext was clear:dont try coming after us on this one, Number 10. We are in the clear.

Blogs do indeed tend to be open to the world. So do many areas of thesocial networking sites. When you create an entry about yourself onMySpace, anyone who visits the site can nd you, unless you change thedefault position in order to make your site private. When you post a piece on

Facebook, which has a huge following among university students around theworld, it is not open to anyone, but there is not much point in being on itunless you make it open to groups of contemporaries and once it is open tothose groups, it is pretty much open, full stop.

That ease of access became clear to theMail on Sundayin May this yearwhen, to its irritation, pictures of Jeff Chevalier, the gay lover of the formerBP chief executive Lord Browne, appeared in newspapers around the world.The Mail had signed Chevalier on an exclusive deal and worked hard to

protect its asset. Unfortunately, it seemed unaware that the former maleprostitute had posted photos and words about himself on an entry hemaintained on Facebook. How many journalists had been keying the nameChevalier into social site search engines?

A walk around the web reveals furious commentary from those whobelieve the press have no right to seek information in this fashion and fromothers who think it would be remarkable if they did not. L J Ulrich, acolumnist on The Daily Athenaeum, the newspaper of West Virginia

University, writes: Like it or not, Facebook is a perfect starting point forinvestigations. The system is literally a treasure trove of information: names,

B r i t i s h

J o u

r n a

l i s m

R e v

i e w

v o l . 1

8 n

o . 2

j u n e 2 0 0 7



7/7

addresses, cell phone numbers, political afliations, interests, hobbies, link-charted contact networks and countless photographs. This type of information makes journalists drool not just because it is readily availableand easy to nd, but it has been voluntarily broadcast into cyberspace.

Anything found on Facebook is well within the public domain. If its posted,nobody can cry about how its used.This gets to the heart of it. These internet sites full a fantasy many of us

have had from our rst days as cub reporters. Suddenly no one shuts the doorin our face; no grey-faced, grief-stricken relative tells us we are ghouls andmakes us think worse of ourselves. Now there is no need for that awkwardspeech of introduction. The door is wide open and a friendly gure isbeckoning: Come in, come in. Make yourself at home. I dont know if any of

it is any use to you, but you will nd lots of pictures and some last words andseveral tributes from friends. Just help yourself.

B r i t i s h

J o u

r n a

l i s m

R e v

i e w

v o l . 1

8 n

o . 2

j u n e 2 0 0 7

Kim Fletcher is a former editor of The Independent on Sunday and editorial

director of the Telegraph group. He is the chairman of the board of the National Council for the Training of Journalists and a member of theBJReditorial board


Documents

2- Why Blogs Are an Open Door