Another cry from the dying old media for on-line anonymity to be swept aside because of on-line abuse.
Was it always like this? Did these hateful anonymous messages arrive when “Letters to the Editor” was the only way to express feelings – in print, of course – about other human beings? “Name and address supplied” was the last straw in anonymity that any editor permitted. But now anonymity must be protected, cosseted, guarded, because privacy, even privacy to abuse, is more important than responsibility. “Online comment” – and the “comment” bit definitely deserves a “sic” – takes precedence over criminal threats.
Cry me a river. The world moves on. The new medium of the Internet gives ordinary people an opportunity to make their voices heard. It also allows them a patina of anonymity. Real anonymity takes some work as you can be traced fairly easily if you are committing a criminal offence – and if you are, there is the law in place to deal with it. Fisk is having difficulty untangling criminal acts from common abuse here, which tends to undermine the argument he is trying to make. Not that it is much of an argument really – it amounts to “I want people to comment under their real name”; a well worn meme in the circles of the professional journalist and one we have heard countless times before from the poor dears.
The matter of abuse is also fairly easily dealt with. The site owner can delete comments that abuse the publications’ comments policy. Even those hateful comments that disturb Fisk’s delicate sensibilities are manageable. Every site that allows comment has the facility to remove those comments if they break the site’s rules. And if they choose not to, well, I suggest Fisk and his equally thin-skinned colleagues grow up and grow a pair.
So, actually, there isn’t a problem at all. But even though there really isn’t a problem to solve, Fisk would like to solve it anyway.
I have written before of the foul, racist abuse I receive – passed on in hard copy by friends who say they sometimes fear for my safety – and of the ambivalent, slovenly way in which those who are involved in “chat rooms” and “platforms” run away from their own responsibility by claiming that they’ve no money for a “mediator” (by which they mean editor) or that “the internet is here to stay, whether you like it or not”.
Oh, do fuck off you pompous lackwit. This is what real freedom of speech means. People get to say things you don’t like and your safety is not, by any remote stretch of the imagination, at risk, you cretin.
Journalists around the world have noticed this phenomenon, whether it be the “preening nastiness of online comment” in Brazilian media about the need for street vigilantes, or the outright ethnic hatred that you can find on the websites of quite respectable publications, often remarks which should result in prosecution for racial hatred.
Ah yes, journalists – professional liars – don’t like it when those of us in the real world who are supposed to hang on their every word now have a vehicle to challenge them and point out that they are lying. Of course, this must mean we are racist or have some sort of made up phobia because those journalists – professional liars and charlatans – are such paragons of virtue and they must be protected from those of us who would call them on their lies and say naughty things about them. These things have always been said, it’s just that the Internet gives them greater exposure. If Fisk has such delicate sensibilities, maybe he should give it all up. He would be doing the world of writing a huge favour in the process.
Don’t suppose he like this either (from Wikipedia)
Fisk – Named after Robert Fisk, a British journalist and author who writes on the Middle East, the term was employed in 2001 by various American conservative and libertarian bloggers who reposted Fisk’s dispatches on their own blogs, along with paragraph-by-paragraph commentary that challenged, countered, and/or mocked Fisk’s viewpoints
Indeed. I suspect it still smarts.
Speaking to my brother yesterday, he told me that his flatmate had some friends round earlier in the week.
And they were boasting of having photographed someone they saw with what they decided was a fascist tattoo, then putting his photo on Facebook and encouraging people to beat him up if they saw him.
Naturally they were of the tolerant, freedom-loving left.
If these people have so much hatred for ideologies not dissimilar to their own, I shudder to think what they’d do to the likes of me.
Forcing people to use their real identities online would be one of the quickest ways to shut down dissent against the trendy opinions of the day.
And I’m sure scum like Fisk know it.
Of course he does. That’s rather the point, isn’t it?
In the “War On Smokers” the anonymous hate usually comes from the gentle and good-hearted Antismokers. I wanted to give readers a feeling for the true sense and extent of it when I was writing the chapter about that aspect of the larger battle on the internet and eventually decided on creating “Four Pages Of Hate” with condensed block text and simple “//” dividers between each comment culled from internet pages. Virtually *all* of them were from people using anonymous handles — roughly 130 internet poster in all.
For my book presentations I then combined those pages into a 3ft x 4ft “Wall Of Hate” which can be seen at http://bit.ly/WallOfHate if you like. Fisk misses an essential element of value in such foulness: it exposes what is out there and gives the rest of us warning of what exists underneath the gloss of societal propriety. Remember the old saying, “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.” It’s good to know the truth of what you’re facing out there.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of “TobakkoNacht — The Antismoking Endgame”
What sad little people (not you, MJM, but those on your wall). While a lifelong non-smoker, I have never been an anti-smoker (but am pleased that I no longer need to shower after a night out… oh, the torture of ambivalence!). I have considered using a pseudonym, but with a name like mine, few believe it to be real, anyway.
(oooh, look – smiley things! 🙂 😛 😳 )
What hasn’t yet dawned on Robert Fisk is that not only does the world not really care when commenters abuse him online (except perhaps for a bit of amusement if it’s witty) but moreover that nobody really cares about Fisk’s opinion pieces either (except perhaps if it’s witty, which he is not)
Columnist’s opinions used to be tomorrows Fish & Chip Paper, but the digital world has moved on from even that. Fisk needs to get over himself.
Not least that this man has gained infamy on the web for being such a dick that a whole method of tearing a new arsehole for journalists has been given his name.