gatewatching

The debate about the ethics of naming Katherine Wilson has spilled over to Troppo, where Don Arthur reflects on his own actions, and responds to my concerns. The new registration thingy at Troppo is taking awhile to give me a password, and my lunchbreak is probably my only window for blogging today, so I’ll reply here rather then there. Sorry Troppo folks.

I’ve tried not to personalise my comments at any stage, except when directly replying to people. I know the way that tends to turn out, and I’m really trying to advance some general principles and have a discussion about ethics, rather than trying to offer free character assessments to anyone in particular.

For what it’s worth, I think by the standards I’ve been trying to advance, Don behaved well. He tried to confirm his hunch with Wilson, and his reporting of what other blogs were saying was fairly unembroidered until he did get some confirmation via Margaret Simons. I have said Don was an exception to what I have been saying about bloggers’ treatment of this information (without directly naming him) from my first post on this topic.

The substance of Don’s disagreement with me is this:

The reason I disagree is because speculating about Katherine Wilson’s involvement was never likely to damage her reputation. There are two reasons for this. First, many reasonable people approved of the hoax. According to David Marr, it “was beautifully done”. And second, Wilson hadn’t cultivated the kind of reputation that was likely to be damaged by hoaxing a conservative journal. Even before the story broke she was a well known and controversial figure in the blogosphere. Wilson doesn’t pretend to be a straight-laced by-the-book journalist. She puts herself forward as an activist.

I can go some of the way with this, but only so far.  Clearly it’s true that Wilson has engaged enthusiastically in online controversy before, and in this case she was hoaxing. As Don puts it, “there is no witness protection pr0gramme for literary hoaxers”.

It still seems like this justification is made in light of the fact that the hoaxer did happen to be Wilson. I’m not sure if it adequately covers what might have been the consequences were it not her. Most of all,  I don’t think it’s a durable answer to the more general question I asked, which Don quotes:

What’s at issue is a very specific question: when is it right to publish details of someone’s identity, knowing that revealing this information may have damaging effects on the the reputation of the person concerned?

I still like my answer - “when you’ve had solid confirmation of their identity” - better than Don’s. His answer appears to be: “if you judge that making a mistake is not going to be damaging to the person whose name you’re publishing, it’s okay to name names.” (If that’s not a fair summary, correction or clarification is welcome). I like mine better because making judgements on the fly about the nature and value of someone’s reputation is likely to be a lot trickier than waiting until  you’re sure of the facts. That’s expecially true if you’re making those judgements without a lot of support or experience, as many bloggers will be.

Ken Parish weighs in with some comments on Don’s post. Somewhat hilariously, he asks:

BTW is Jason Wilson related to Kath Wilson?

No Ken, I’m not.  No sanguinary links,  either, with  Brian Wilson, Edmund Wilson, Colin Wilson or Woodrow Wilson. Here’s a whole list of Wilsons that, worse luck, I’m not related to. I chuckled so much at this I totally forgot to take exception to what Ken was implying.

In point of fact, I’ve never had any contact or direct dialogue with Katherine Wilson whatsoever - I’m almost certain I haven’t even interacted with her  in a comments thread on a blog. I don’t know her from Adam. From what I understand of her views, I suspect we’d disagree more then we agreed across most subjects. But actually, I think my lack of any kind of history with Wilson gives me a perspective on this that others don’t have.

Ken does respond robustly to the substance of my concerns as well:

However, as I’m sure Jason knows, newspaper and blog publishers face decisions about whether to publish and take some level of risk of defamation action on an almost daily basis. Bloggers tend to give much less considered thought to it than MSM outlets, mostly because the latter are large, wealthy targets and therefore much more likely to be sued. MSM publishers make the following assessments before publishing a story with an evident defamation risk:
(a) is the story legitimately newsworthy?
(b) is the subject of the story likely to sue? and
(c) if sued is the story “defendable” (which doesn’t mean a cast iron guarantee that a defence will certainly succeed)?

I know that such criteria like this are in use, and I agree with their pragmatic value  for large, well-resourced media organisations. And, Ken’s the legal expert. If he says that a wealthy, aggrieved and/or vindictive person wouldn’t be likely to pursue a blogger of modest means through the courts for defamation, I guess I have to believe him. I’m just not sure I’d want to bet my house on it, though, or anyone else’s for that matter.

My hunch is that bloggers give these issues less consideration not because of shrewd calculations but because, on the whole, there’s less awareness of what’s at stake than among journalists. (Legal professionals like Ken and more experienced bloggers will be exceptions to this).

Also, here, I’m glad Ken appears to endorse the relevance of the comparison between the actions and practices  journalists and bloggers in this instance. This at least allows the conversation to continue.

Ken adds to his initial comment by coming to the ethical points I’m far more interested in:

PS There would certainly be some circumstances where ethics would nevertheless demand that reasonable attempts should be made to contact the subject of the story to seek confirmation or denial before publication. I note that Don Arthur did so before his initial post in any event. There is also a legal obligation to do this if one wants to succeed on the defence of fair comment (or political communication extended qualified privilege) if sued for defamation. However, ethically at least I don’t think this is such a situation. The ethical obligation arises if the nature of the story will foreseeably cause significant damage to the reputation of the subject. That isn’t the case with Kath Wilson, a point Don Arthur makes in the primary post.

I actually agree with almost all of this. Most of it encapsulates  neatly what I’ve been saying all along.  My only disagreement would be: I’m still not convinced that Katherine Wilson deserves to be made into a special case. As far as I was concerned, her reputation wasn’t such that, had she been named incorrectly, she wouldn’t have been damaged by it. There may be other people with the same view.

Also, Ken argues that all this is evidence of some “preciousness” on my part. I guess I can wear that. But surely there are dangers inherent in the opposite approach - being cavalier with others’ reputations, and loose with the truth? I’ve seen Ken (rightly) castigate bloggers who exhibit this kind of behaviour. I’m not sure why he’s taking such pointed exception to me raising it.

blogging, ethics blogging, blogosphere, Club Troppo, ethics, Hoax, KatherineWilson, KeithWindschuttle, Quadrant