STOP PRESS: DEFAMATION IS OK!

I think before the this blog concludes, it’s important to highlight the Twitter experiment we conducted.

In preparation for the group presentations, the ‘Taming the Beast’ team decided to become incredibly defammatory in an effort to have our tweets removed, or be banned, or get ticked off, or, or … anything really!

The tweets were, more often than not, based around celebrity shenanigans as oppose to serious news and current affairs. But then again, celebrities are the news to many – they certainly sell.

So what happened?

Well, we questioned the sexuality of John Travolta, feigned terrorism attacks, stereotyped and just downright defamed. And who could forget the David Mlliband shocker?! (All in the name of journalism, you understand.)

And the backlash?

Nothing.

I guess we all know defamation occurs on the internet, but it was certainly interesting to see this happening for ourselves. I think a swift closure of the account may be just what the doctor ordered.

Blogs and blogging

I love that blogging is now considered to be an essential tool for journalism. It’s informal and it provides a wider level of participation in fact anyone who has access to the internet can be involved. Meaning this kind of media isn’t just confined to the professional. The blog  discusses everything not just the things we hear or read in the main stream media. On top of that, it provides an extensive platform for learning new things.

However, the biggest issue is that a large proportion of blogs are non-factual, defamatory, provocative and offensive. With that in mind it is sometimes hard to tell the difference between what is true and what is false. Another issue that should be taken into account, is that a blog can be written in minutes, published in seconds, and not checked properly. There have been many occasions where somebody has posted something in the heat of the moment defaming somebody.

“If the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, that what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding”- President Barack Obama

It is widely assumed that if the Main stream media didn’t follow a stringent set of rules and laws, the material you might find in them will be similar to that found in many blogs.  The main stream media is governed by many rules, and breaching any of the terms set out can result in legal action, compensation payouts and fines (to name a few). Statements in blogs may face legal and social consequences once published there are no rules or guidance in place for bloggers to note beforehand.

There is regulation. Not in the same sence that there is regulation in the main stream press, but in the sense that if something is published breaching defamatory laws, action can be taken. Did you know over $17 million has been won in defamatory and libelous cases in the United States alone, in relation to blogging….but it doesn’t matter how much money you claim, once something is on the internet it is more than likely to stay embedded there permanently and you as the author and the publisher of the blog will always be responsible for this.

Messages can be pushed directly to the public through blogging. Some institutions regard the tool as  ‘getting around the filter’ of the main press. It is not necessarily a bad thing, it allows people to open up their minds to other ideas. The responsibility of regulation falls to the publisher. It’s hard to discuss blog regulation without talking about internet governance which is a relatively impossible task. A number of governments around the world have suggested the idea of submitting all blog posts through an agency to check and regulate its content, but with millions of posts daily, and blogs appearing on a very regular basis, the task would be almost as impossible of regulating the whole of the internet.

The YouTube video below is a discussion about blogging on an Indian television show. It outlines the main concerns of blogging, and what should be done to regulate it.