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Sinking to the Lowest Level in Journalism

Among the occasional emails that drop into my inbox are ones from Tony Mobily who edits the Free Software Magazine. However, the one that I got today was not the usual one in the business of journalism – rather it was a pointer to an editorial (or a pill as Tony calls it) about a recent article written by Maureen O’Gara on Pamela Jones (or PJ), the famous editor of GrokLaw. Intrigued, I went searching for this article.

I found it quick enough (but you will have to look for it yourself). It is simply appaling – the article does not remotely pass for anything remotely related to technology news. Instead it reads like a detective story about how Ms. O’Gara “was just looking for Pamela”. In the process of this “search” Ms. O’Gara came across Ms. Jones’s home address, complete with apartment number. She also spoke to the super of the building, got some nice juicy stories out of him including her age, religious affiliation, her mother’s address and some religious booklets. All of this information is something that most normal human beings that are sane consider private and do not publish or reveal to strangers. A normal journalist would have kept that information queit and simply written a small article describing the search (or more probably would not have written one at all).

However, INSTEAD Ms. O’Gara decided to publish ALL of the information complete with pictures on the Web. And if that wasn’t enough, the article that comes along with the information puts every single piece of it into negative light. This is simply the lowest of the lowest in journalism, something more approriate for the National Enquirer or the Weekly World News, rather than a technology related publication with a relatively decent reputation. Of course, the reactions were quick to come by: multiple editors of many publications have commented on how despicable this is (FreeSoftware Mag, LinuxToday, LinuxWorld [1] and [2]).

Now imagine if someone goes ahead, and publishes your home address, telephone number, your mother’s name and addresses, your age and religious affiliation. How would you feel? Probably the same as me – very BAD. I don’t care whether Ms. O’Gara hates or likes Linux, or for that matter Ms. Jones as well. What I DO care is that the minimal journalistic standards should be adhered to. Which is why there is a need to let SYS CON, the company that published Ms. O’Gara’s article that this type of journalism is unacceptable. And if you are like myself, who have written for them in the past, perhaps it is time to reconsider writing for them in the future.

UPDATE: PJ herself wrote a response

UPDATE #2: Sys-Con is removing all of Ms. O’Gara’s content from their sites.

UPDATE #3: Here is an interview with the publisher of Sys-Con about the controversy (Among other tidbits mentioned, it seems that there were a few DDOS attacks on Sys-Con’s sites after the original article was published).

Tags: open source, press —

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