Kerre vs Bloggers Round III

Kerre Woodham defends and explains her column of last week calling for anonymous bloggers to be stopped.

Referring to the CYFS Watch site, she says:

I was not suggesting that those with a gripe against CYF were malicious cowards. That sobriquet was reserved for those anonymous bloggers who resorted to personal attacks and vicious abuse of CYF staff.

There’s some confusion here between what a blogger is, and people who respond to blogs. A blogger is the actual persons or person who run a blog. Here that is me. At Public Address it is the eight or so authors. And at CYFS Watch it is the anonymous person who set it up and solicited stories.

All those people who sent stories in are not bloggers. They are just people who e-mailed the blog owner with their stories.

In relation to talkback radio allowing anonymous callers Kerre says:

Talkback radio and blogs are very different beasts. There is a degree of control, for better or worse, on radio which means no one is allowed to resort to personal attacks. If I’d allowed a caller to say some of the things written on the blog, the company would go for a skate and damages would be paid out to the offended party. And even though callers might withhold their real names and numbers, they can still be traced if they need to be held accountable for their statements. Most amateur webmasters don’t exercise that same responsibility.

Kerre is right that radio gives you more control. Each medium has its pros and cons. Blog Debates *can* be of a higher quality than talkback debates as people can go away and do research and link to it when participating in the debate. Factually wrong statements get challenged far more on blogs than on talkback. Again this is not saying A is good and B is bad, just that different mediums have different pros and cons.

And despite what many think, one can trace most people if you need to, through their IP addresses. One commenter on my blog said highly defamatory things about a journalist and I supplied their IP address which allowed them to be traced quite easily. Especially when that IP address had also been used to edit Wikipedia etc.

Kerre also is unconvinced at the need for bloggers to remain anonymous for their safety:

And as for the argument that bloggers need to remain anonymous for their safety – please! That might hold true in Iraq, but I don’t think a C-grade media studies graduate has much to worry about as he taps away on his computer in Glendowie.

I’m not sure I have heard people argue it is necessary for their safety (in this country) but there are many legitimate reasons why people want to be anonymous. Those who work in the public service would be the biggest category. Others may work for a firm which does a lot of Government business. Others may have a boss who politically disagrees with them and would make life hard if he or she knew their views. These are not hypotheticals but actual cases I know of. And some just don’t want their names in Google for every future employer to see.

Finally it’s good to read that Rachel (Cunliffe I would guess) has been introducing Kerre to a wider realm of blogs. That’s great because yes there are some shit blogs out there, but there are also many amazing blogs – especially those devoted to a single issue or topic.