What happens when multiple bloggers do multiple investigations of a currently hot blog topic? What happens when the hot topic is a human being? Does that human being become a public figure*, with the loss of legal rights that status entails?
After Kathryn Cramer blogged some (mistaken) speculation about the Fallujah killings–and after she took down the post and apologized for it–she got hate mail including death threats, some posted to her teenage daughter’s website.
Kathryn Cramer believed she was being attacked by conservative readers of the LGF blog. JD Guckert (better known by his professional name Jeff Gannon) believes that liberal blogreaders are harassing his family.
If you find that hard to believe, check out, for example, this collaborative investigative thread on Kos. What’s striking about it is not so much the occasional bit about “Don’t harass his mother, she’s probably a senior citizen,” but the thrill of the chase that unites participants as they compete to deliver new information of any kind about anyone named Guckert.
We bloggers think of ourselves as individuals. When we team up to report on a shared news story, we need to start thinking about the human impact of an possible swarm of people following our lead.
- * public figure
- n. in the law of defamation (libel and slander), a personage of great public interest or familiarity like a government official, politician, celebrity, business leader, movie star or sports hero. Incorrect harmful statements published about a public figure cannot be the basis of a lawsuit for defamation unless there is proof that the writer or publisher intentionally defamed the person with malice (hate).
Thanks to
Jay Rosen (PressThink) for a post on Blog Storm Troopers that made me start asking these questions.