Program scripts from week of June 18, 2012
My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media. TV, radio, the movies and more. I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion. Call this the View from the Phlipside.
Taming Trolls
There are few things more infuriating online than trolls. Trolls are folks who choose to use the anonymity of the Internet to abuse anyone with whom they disagree. This often involves abusive language, outrageous statements or even ongoing harassment of other people. We’ve talked about trolls before. Conventional wisdom says “Don’t Feed the Trolls”, meaning you should just ignore them. Most trolls are interested in the amount of attention they can get. In the end the fact is that there is very little you can do about trolls.
At least until now. In the United Kingdom they’ve decided to strike back against trolls. A new law is going to put at least some limits on what trolls can say and still get away anonymously. Before your only choice if you felt you had been defamed on a website was to sue the site owner. In many ways that was never really fair and allowed the real culprit to get away without penalty. Under the new law if you are defamed the website operator will be required to give up the information they have on the troll. That information will be sufficient to identify that person and then you can sue them.
It’s already had its first test when a man was convicted of sending an offensive e-mail to a Member of Parliament threatening the safety of her children if she didn’t stop posting on Twitter. The court gave 60 year old Frank Zimmerman a six month jail term suspended for two years and a list of other folks he is not allowed to contact. My assumption is that he had been trolling them as well.
The bottom line is that trolls are cowards and bottom feeders. Acting out of their own fears and insecurities they lash out from behind the screen of anonymity because they don’t have the courage of their convictions. While I’m certain some in this country will be concerned about First Amendment rights I think the law can very easily fit within our understanding of Freedom of Expression. Remember, your First Amendment rights are not unlimited. There have always been carefully crafted boundaries for what is and isn’t protected speech. And there are large swathes of trollish expression that we can legitimately legislate against.
If you want to call me names that’s probably protected. Defamation, harassment and threatening my own or my families safety is not. Nor should it be.
Lies and Facebook
As if the folks at Facebook needed a few more problems on their plate it looks like there is one headed their way. Oh by the way just for the record who was it who noted that the IPO for Facebook stock was going to be a complete circus? Me. Ok, me and a couple hundred other people. But hey, I called it.
Meanwhile to add insult to the injury of lost billions of dollars Facebook is facing a rather vexing problem. It begins with the fact that a largish number of folks on Facebook are big fat liars. And that the result is that the social network just might find itself out of compliance with a federal law because of it.
The law in question is called COPPA, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act which went into effect in the spring of 2000. The basic idea is to protect children under the age of 13 from having all kinds of personal information gathered about them by websites and used to target commercials to them. A lot of online folks have gotten around the rules by simply not allowing people under the age of 13 to use their site.
And that’s where the lying comes in. LOTS of underage users simply lie about their age. Consumers Report says seven and a half million as of 2011. And a lot of their parents not only know about it but approve of it. Beyond the whole question of teaching our kids that lying is OK in pursuit of what you want (which it isn’t) there’s still the question of what our children may be exposed to because of it all.
It’s one thing if a 12 year old says they’re 13. They probably won’t be exposed to anything too age appropriate. I am personally aware of 11 and 12 year olds who claim to be 16, 17 or 18 on Facebook. Now we’re in a whole different world. Information about our kids is not only shared between Facebook and its advertisers its sold or given to third party developers as well. A thought that has probably never occurred to the parents assisting their children in their online lies.
In the end Facebook wants your kids for one reason and one reason only. So they can sell to them. COPPA may not be perfect but it’s designed with the best interests of our kids in mind.
Might be nice if parents tried to do the same thing.
Old School Outrage
I got my start in the media in newsrooms. At the college radio stations where I first began your first job was usually reading the news. My first professional job was as a one man news room at a tiny radio station in the middle of no where. My attitudes towards the news media especially are old school. I believe in all those old standards about trying for objectivity, checking on sources and make the story the star. For me the ultimate news man remains Edward R. Murrow.
So you can probably imagine my reaction to what happened during a White House press conference this past week. The party in question was Neil Munro a correspondent for an online news site called The Daily Caller. He’s not a regular member of the White House press corps but one of the folks who are rotated in and out. It’s a way that minor news outlets can still get some access. At a press conference held at the White House Rose Garden Munro suddenly shouted out a question in the middle of the President’s speech. The President corrected him but Munro persisted for a moment before subsiding.
Munro claims that he thought the President was through and was just trying to get the first question in. Having looked at the video I find that explanation a little thin. But even if I give him the benefit of the doubt why keep pushing? The President informs you he’s not done, you apologize and wait till the end. Pretty simple protocol. Which Munro didn’t bother with so he loses points there as well.
I was also appalled with the reaction from his boss. Talking head Tucker Carlson is co-founder of The Daily Caller. When another reporter caught up with him at an airport following the incident at the White House Carlson acknowledged that he hadn’t seen the video but was fine with whatever Munro had done. Your reporter had interrupted the President of the United States but you’re fine with that.
This is what I hate about too much of what passes for journalism these days. It’s become much more about the reporter and much less about the story. It has become much more about being a personality and commentator than being a journalist. And any concept of respect for the time and place has been flushed entirely down the toilet.
Personally I think Munro and The Daily Caller should lose their spot in the White House rotation all together. At least until they learn a few of the old rules of journalism.
(When this program aired I consistently omitted the word Daily from the name of the news outlet. I apologize for that error)
Call that the View From the Phlipside.
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