Why did one blogger keep Belle’s identity secret for eight years?

As noted by Journalism.co.uk yesterday (and before that, by the Guardian on its front page) LinkMachineGo [LMG] blogger Darren deduced Belle de Jour’s real identity as early as 2001.

But he kept quiet. Journalism.co.uk asked Darren why – and what he thinks of blogging anonymously. “I protected [Brooke] Magnanti’s identity because we were both early bloggers,” he says.

“I respected her blogging and realised that her real life and career might be ruined if I did not keep her identity a secret. Discovering her identity started out as a fun game but turned serious when I realised I was right. Especially after I saw how Zoe Margolis (Girl with a One Track Mind) was treated by the press.”

Once Darren guessed who was behind the Belle blog, he published a ‘googlewack’ on his blog (the words ‘Belle de Jour’ ‘Brooke Magnanti’ and ‘Methylsalicylate’ were published and available in Google’s index on a single page on the internet, on LMG). If someone googled ‘Belle de Jour’ and ‘Brooke Magnanti’, he would see it in his referrers for LinkMachineGo.

It was five years before someone did: “I don’t know who was behind the searches that arrived at my blog over the years. It was only two or three. I suspect other bloggers who had guessed (there are many who were in the same position I was re: guessing) or friends of Magnanti. All the hits came from Internet services used by homeowners (BT, Virgin etc).”

Then a couple of weeks ago he spotted that numerous people were searching the terms several times a day – from Associated Newspapers’ IP address. That’s when he alerted Magnanti. This, with other tip-offs, convinced her to go public on her own terms.

So what does Darren think about the mainstream media’s revelations? “The coverage has been generally reasonable apart from the Daily Mail’s. I’m very glad I emailed her after seeing what they reported.”

The incident is a lesson in online anonymity, he says: “You cannot remain anonymous or pseudonymous on the internet for long. It’s an amazing achievement she managed to last six years without being outed.”

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Online tribute to global journalism trainer Russell Lyne

Journalism trainer and former journalist Russell Lyne has died aged 65, the Thomson Foundation reports.

Lyne, who had been in poor health for two years after suffering a stroke, joined the global training foundation in 1995, and later became a full-time project manager and training consultant, and eventually head of regional development.

He was ‘a cornerstone of the Foundation’s international success,’ the organisation said this week.

He worked in numerous countries: South Africa, Botswana, India, Vietnam, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Bahrain, Qatar, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia, Kasakhstan, Romania and Bulgaria.

Lyne’s career included time at newspapers, radio and television:

“After working as night news editor for the Western Mail, the daily newspaper for Wales, between 1976 and 1978, he formed his own freelance news agency before joining the BBC as chief news assistant for BBC Radio Wales in 1982. Russell went on spend a year as a producer for BBC Radio Four’s Today programme in 1983. He later became a senior producer for BBC Radio Wales, leaving to join HTV as news editor in 1987, where he eventually became programme controller of news and sport.”

Thomson Foundation CEO Janet Boston writes:

“Time after time I meet people  from Asia, Africa and the Middle East who tell me, quite unprompted, that he was one of the best trainers they ever had. Apparently Russell’s energy bounced off the training room walls either with pleasure that the group were responding or with complete irritation at their lack of enthusiasm.”

The foundation is asking for additional memories of Lyne. Contribute yours at this link.

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STL Social Media Guy: Web comment on newspaper site loses man his job

A ‘vulgar’ comment from a man on the St Louis-Post’s Dispatch website, STLtoday.com, resulted in him resigning from his job.

Kurt Greenbaum, online news director and director of social media at the paper, explains how he twice deleted the comment.

“[I then] noticed in the WordPress e-mail that his comment had come from an IP address at a local school. So I called the school. They were happy to have me forward the e-mail, though I wasn’t sure what they’d be able to do with the meager information it included,” explains Greenbaum.

“About six hours later, I heard from the school’s headmaster. The school’s IT director took a shine to the challenge. Long story short: Using the time-frame of the comments, our website location and the IP addresses in the WordPress e-mail, he tracked it back to a specific computer. The headmaster confronted the employee, who resigned on the spot.”

Full post at this link…

But as the site Awful Marketing asks, is this a violation of trust or a newspaper’s privacy policy?

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Frontline Blog: 10 ways to make it as a stringer

Foreign bureaux may be shrinking, but that doesn’t mean it’s all bad for journalists, says Rob Crilly, formerly of Nairobi and now working in Jerusalem.

“The days of the linen-suited staff foreign correspondent are gone. That’s sad and probably means foreign coverage is getting patchier. But it means there are more opportunities for motivated, well-organised and professional stringers – reporters who file to multiple outlets.”

Crilly shares ten tips for making it as a stringer, covering how to learn it, bust it, read it, meet it, blog it, slum it, structure it and flog it.

Full post at this link…

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Will inquiries find PCC a chocolate teapot, or a serious ‘mediator’?

The Press Complaints Commission enjoyed mainstream coverage this week, as newspaper titles lapped up the comments of the body’s chair, Lady Peta Buscombe, at the Society of Editors’ conference: she not only called for greater press support, but cited evidence allegedly showing that 6,000 attempted phone hackings were ‘wrongly quoted’ by solicitor Mark Lewis in the House of Commons.

Funnily enough, the papers who were so eager to report Buscombe’s words, didn’t then – save the Guardian it would seem – pick up Mark Lewis’ call for Buscombe’s resignation as PCC chair. You can read Lewis’ letter, sent to Buscombe, the select committee and copied to the Press Association, in full at this link.

Lewis has since told Journalism.co.uk:

“As I said in my [House of Commons] evidence, given immediately after that of Mr Yates [Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner], it wasn’t that I had access to documents that the police did not have, I got the documents from the police. Didn’t they read them? Didn’t they understand them?”

“The PCC has shown its true colours. If there is to be non-court regulation then it has to be from an independent tribunal that is not constituted by the press. Oddly, it would work in the press’ interest if there was a body that was willing to challenge and censor the press. As I said on Monday, we need an ‘honest and free press not just a free press’.

“My next step will be to carry on in the pursuit of honesty in reporting. If you are in any doubt, look at how many newspapers chose not to run a story that there had been a demand for Lady Buscombe to resign. The newspapers reported Lady Buscombe’s speech but not my response to it.”

Then, just as QC Geoffrey Robertson had hoped when he encouraged editors to abandon the body, news broke of Alan Rusbridger’s resignation from the PCC Code Committee.

“I have enjoyed being on the Code Committee, which does very useful work. I look forward to the results of the review of the PCC which Baroness Buscombe has announced.  The PCC is a valuable mediator. It needs to ask itself whether, as presently constructed and funded, it is a very effective regulator,” was all that the Guardian editor had to say afterwards.

His comments last week, following the PCC’s less than critical findings about phone tapping activities at News of the World, were somewhat stronger:  speaking on BBC Radio 4, the Guardian editor described the PCC’s report as ‘worse than pointless’. “If you have a self-regulation system that’s finding nothing out and has no teeth, and all the work is being done by external people, it’s dangerous for self-regulation,” he said.

The PCC has not yet responded to Journalism.co.uk’s request for comment over Rusbridger’s departure, but Buscombe today appeared on Radio 4 Media Show [as noted by Jon Slattery at this link]. Rusbridger is right, she said. “We don’t have serious powers of investigation. We are not a police force. Even Ofcom doesn’t have it. A state regulator doesn’t have it. We cannot and we must not tread on the toes of the criminal justice system. We act in many ways more as a mediator, so that we actually stop and prevent harm and therefore have a very strong role in terms of pre-publication, for example,” she said.

So what’s the point of the body at all? MP Tom Watson, who sat on the House of Commons culture and media select committee for the phone hacking inquiry, thinks not much. Running the PCC like a clan has led to Rusbridger’s resignation, he said on Tuesday. “It could spell the end of self-regulation. How silly of the new chair,” he tweeted. While in favour of self-regulation, the PCC simply isn’t doing it, he later clarified in another tweet: “[I] believe in self-regulation. And I’d like to see the PCC try it some time.”

A toothless chocolate teapot as alleged by some, or is there a realistic future for the PCC? Investigations of the self-regulation body, such as the one launched by the International Federation of Journalists; the select committee’s inquiry; and the PCC’s own review (led by a former commission member) are anticipated with interest…

• Update: More from the Media Standards Trust director, Martin Moore, at this link…

NB: This post was later updated with a corrected transcript from the Radio 4 Media Show (19.11.09).

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MediaGuardian: Alan Rusbridger resigns from PCC code committee

Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger, has resigned from the Press Complaint Commission’s code committee, MediaGuardian reports.

His decision follows the PCC’s criticism of the way the Guardian had handled new allegations about past phone hacking at News of the World.

The PCC last week said it had found no new evidence further to its 2007 enquiry, a report which the Guardian, reporter Nick Davies and the Media Standards Trust strongly challenged.

On Sunday, the self-regulatory body’s chair Lady Peta Buscombe, cited police lawyers’ claims that a Metropolitan Police detective inspector had been ‘wrongly quoted’ in phone hacking evidence given to the House of Commons.

In response, the lawyer who gave the oral evidence, Mark Lewis, called for Buscombe’s resignation.

Full story at this link…

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Barack Obama on Twitter and Chinese internet censorship

Barack Obama answered questions on internet censorship and Twitter in his (live-streamed) talk to Chinese students yesterday:

ReadWriteWeb was shocked to learn that Obama has ‘never used Twitter.’ It turns out that someone else in his office is responsible for the 2.6 million followers… “But I’m an advocate of technology and not restricting internet access,” Obama said.

Meanwhile, the UK nationals have picked up his comments on internet censorship. The Times, for example:

Mr Obama was asked whether he knew of the ‘Great Firewall’ – the popular term for the blocks that China’s Government imposes on the internet to keep out content its censors deem inappropriate for its citizens. Mr Obama said: “I have always been a strong supporter of open internet use. I am a big supporter of non-censorship. I recognise that different countries have different traditions.”

It was the answer in which he came the closest to subtle criticism of his hosts, saying he believed the freedom to reprove a country’s leaders helped to strengthen democracy. “I should be honest, there are times when I wish information didn’t flow so freely, then I wouldn’t have to listen to people criticise me all the time. People naturally when in positions of power think ‘How could that person say that of me? That’s irresponsible’.”

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Global Post: New record for Mexican journalist murders

A sobering piece on GlobalPost.com that rounds up the violence against journalists in the last year:

According to a tally by El Universal, the country’s top-selling newspaper, 12 reporters, photographers, editors and radio hosts have been slain this year – two more than in the previous worst year of 2006. The deaths – all of Mexicans working for local media – make the country the most dangerous for the trade in the Western hemisphere.

(….)

One major problem is that Mexican authorities have been so overwhelmed with violent attacks on their own officials, protecting journalists has become a low priority. In the last 18 months, more than 1,000 police, soldiers, judges and other agents have been slain in execution style hits and abductions.

Full post at this link…

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Buscombe continued: ‘We have a dysfunctional democracy’

More from PCC chairman Baroness Peta Buscombe (last night’s speech in full here / report here) on this morning’s Radio 4 Today Programme. She argued that a free press plays an important role in scrutinising government policies, but would not be drawn on the Sun’s use of the Jacqui Janes / Gordon Brown tape.

Listen to Buscombe at this link: (07.56)

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Kipp Report: Can CNN’s new office challenge UAE censorship laws?

“There’s a deal you make when you become a journalist in the UAE: in exchange for a reasonable salary and a good position, you keep your nose out of meaty stories. If you don’t like it, you can leave,” writes Dana El Baltaji.

El Baltaji should know, having worked for Emirates Today (later Emirates Business 24/7) – a paper to challenge the status quo of censorship in the region, which according to this writer has ‘genuinely disappointed’ in this aim.

As such, will CNN’s new Abu Dhabi bureau report freely on the United Arab Emirates despite strict laws restricting coverage on the royal family and its businesses, asks this piece.

Full story at this link…

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