Online support for Goldacre gathers pace

Ben Goldacre has recorded this interview with Journalism.co.uk, following initial coverage of the LBC/Jeni Barnett row last week.

Read extracts or listen to the full interview at this link for ‘Goldacre’s Law’ explained; the doctor’s view on television (it’s too rude to transcribe); how he thinks newspapers should employ more bloggers as writers; and a bit of background on the MMR debate.

Since last Thursday’s post he has picked up a wide array of support across the web as people share their views on whether Global Radio, owner of LBC, is within its rights to ask Goldacre to remove the LBC clip from his Bad Science blog.

Goldacre has the mainstream media support of David Aaronovitch over at TimesOnline while bloggers have rushed to collect information relating to the ‘story’ and republish the audio elsewhere. Comments express opinion on both the original subject – the anti-MMR campaign – and LBC legal team’s actions. A Facebook group has also been set up.

Stephen Fry has expressed his support via Twitter too and left this comment on Goldacre’s blog:

stephenfry said, February 10, 2009 at 1:29 am

“The fatuity of the Jeni Barnett woman’s manner – her blend of self-righteousness and stupidity, her simply quite staggering inability to grasp, pursue or appreciate a sequence of logical steps – all these are signature characteristics of Britain these days. The lamentable truth is that most of the population wouldn’t really understand why we get so angry at this assault on reason, logic and sense. But we have to keep hammering away at these people and their superstitious inanities. We have to. Well done you and well done all you supporting. I’ve tweeted this site to my followers. I hope they all do their best to support you. Publish and be damned. We’ll fight them and fight them and fight them in the name of empricism, reason, double blind random testing and all that matter

Love

Stephen xxx
http://twitter.com/stephenfry”

Additionally, it is alleged by several blogs, including Quackometer.net that Barnett has removed comments from her own blog.

Journalism.co.uk will now follow up again with Global Radio and Jeni Barnett.

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US newspaper websites – take a break, time for ‘drastic action’, says petition

UPDATE: A video intro from the petition’s creator TJ Sullivan calling for drastic action by the industry and Journalism.co.uk finds out more from Sullivan himself.

An online petition has been set up calling on US newspapers and the Associated Press to shutdown their websites to non-paying subscribers for a week (July 4-10) and make original news content .

The petition, which currently has 120 signatures, wants to highlight ‘the threat posed to democracy by the loss of professionally staffed and ethically bound American newspapers’.

It is not, the blurb points out, an endorsement of any paid-for access model.

The likelihood of any newspapers heeding this call….? We’ll be speaking to the petition’s organiser to find out their motivation. One signature comes from ‘Ostrich with head in sand’, an unusual moniker.

(Though perhaps Gannett might not be so against it – the publisher could organise its week of unpaid work to fit these dates)

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Media Release: FT and USA Today partner Plastic Logic e-reader launch

Content from titles to be made available on Plastic Logic e-reader – to be launched end of 2009.

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Note to press offices: do not get on the wrong side of Noel Edmonds

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Wikipedia: Giles Hattersley’s ‘missing’ Wikipedia page

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Then – a ‘hatchet job’ entry is created to slight Hattersley and defend the encyclopaedia.

“It is not ok to create hatchet jobs about people for any reason, and especially if the reason is simply because you feel that they were wrong in some respect about Wikipedia. Not ok. Not ever,” writes (what appears to be) Wikipedia’s own Jimmy Wales.

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