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WITN?: Yahoo didn’t sentence 200,000 Iranians to death, and other misadventures in online journalism

In one of those wonderful ironies of scheduling that make columnists weep with joy, Larry Dignan spent yesterday at a Yahoo! hack day in New York.

This is the same Larry Dignan who is Editor in Chief of ZDNet, which is the same ZDNet that yesterday published a blog post accusing Yahoo of passing the names and email addresses of thousands – sorry, hundreds of thousands -  of bloggers to the Iranian authorities during the country’s recent election.

Poor old Larry. One can only imagine the warmth with which he was greeted when he arrived at Yahoo’s event. “Hey Larry!” his hosts may perhaps have said “go fuck yourself.” And their suggestion wouldn’t be entirely unfair, given that the story – written by ‘lawyer and technology writer’ Richard Koman, was a steaming pile of horseshit.

How much horseshit? Let’s break it down, just for giggles. Koman’s unnamed source for the story was a guy who had translated an Iranian blog post written in Farsi. The post – which, let’s say it again, was written in Farsi, which Koman doesn’t speak – was published on the blog of an avowedly anti-government Iranian student group. In the original post, which Koman quoted without a secondary source or an independent translation, it was claimed that Yahoo’s Malaysian subsidiary had passed on the information after access to their Iranian site was blocked by Tehran. Yahoo doesn’t have an Iranian site, nor does it have a base of operations in Malaysia. Neither Koman nor anyone else at ZDNet bothered to put the allegations to Yahoo before publishing a story which Koman admitted he hadn’t got entirely “buttoned down”.

I emailed Larry to find out what on earth went wrong. Is there even a jot of editorial oversight on ZDNet’s blogs? I asked him. Didn’t the fact that the sole source for the story was someone who had translated an avowedly biased blog written in Farsi by students in opposition to the Iranian government give him or any other ZDNet editor pause?

In response, Larry was candid in the way that only a man who has spent the day at a hack day organised by people he’d accused of sentencing two hundred thousand Iranians to death can be….

“Our bloggers publish on their own schedule and post themselves. We backread posts and sometimes read them in advance, but generally we trust our bloggers will follow journalistic principles.  And many of them have years of experience and are experts in their fields. In five years of ZDNet blogging we have had few issues of shoddy journalism within our blog network. We trust the bloggers we select to use good judgment and alert us to any potential problems. This was an gross error from a seasoned blogger, and we should have been more on top of it.”

Kudos, Larry. And kudos for publishing a such a prompt and detailed retraction. But yes, you should have been more on top of it. Here’s why…

Earlier this year TechCrunch published a story titled ‘Did Last.fm just hand over listener data to the RIAA?‘ (Spoiler alert: no). In the story, we – by which I mean, not me – quoted an apparently rock solid (and English speaking) source who claimed that Last had been tricked by parent-company CBS into passing on a whole bunch of listener information to the recording industry. An outcry promptly ensued, especially after TechCrunch’s source disappeared without trace and both Last.fm and CBS issued categorical denials. A source at CBS was quoted by Ars Technica describing our – which is to say not my – story as “irresponsible journalism” while Last’s Richard Jones went even further in a blog post headed ‘Techcrunch are full of shit.’

Despite doing our best to verify the story, including roping in additional sources, we – which is to say, not me – were left with some egg on our faces. At the time, I was still writing for the Guardian where I wrote a couple of brilliantly insightful columns about the incident, including one in which I lectured TechCrunch – and by extension all bloggers – on how writing on a blog doesn’t excuse you from the rules of journalism 101.

Specifically I offered some lessons that professional blogs might want to carry over from old media. Stop allowing bloggers to post their own stories without passing them first through an editor. Don’t publish a story accusing a company of malpractice without first giving them a chance to deny it. That kind of thing. And yet, eight months on, ZDNet still operates a policy – as does TechCrunch (mostly), as did the Telegraph when I wrote for them – where ‘trusted’ bloggers can post stories without so much as a gramme of editorial oversight, and without anyone ensuring that the subject of the story has been contacted for comment.

Enough.

Trusting the common sense  of your writers is all well and good – but when it comes to breaking news, where journalistic adrenaline is at its highest and everyone is paranoid about being scooped by a competitor, that common sense can too easily become the first casualty. Journalists get caught up in the moment; we get excited and we post stupid crap from a foreign language student blog and call it news. And then within half a minute – bloggers being what they are – the news gets repeated and repeated until it becomes fact. Fact that can affect share prices or ruin lives. This is the reality of the blogosphere, where Churchill’s remark: that “a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on” is more true, and more potentially damaging, than at any time in history.

I was going to reply with all of this to Larry, to tell him about our – which is to say not my – run in with CBS and to sympathise with him over how easy it is for this kind of thing to happen. He’d had a bad day after all, and he didn’t need anyone making it worse. But then I clicked ‘reply’, saw Larry’s email address and experienced one of those wonderful moments of serendipity that make columnists weep with joy. Because seeing Larry’s email address reminded me which company owns ZDNet. That company…?

CBS.

Did CBS just accuse Yahoo of handing over user data to the Iranians? Oh yes they fucking did. Thank you baby Jesus.

I thought for a moment whether it was mean to gloat. Whether it was unfair to write a post reminding CBS of their “irresponsible journalism” remark. Wouldn’t that just be mean? Shouldn’t I at least give Larry a chance to respond to the irony? Perhaps I should check with my editor before posting – yunno, make sure I’ve got everything buttoned down.

And then I remembered. I’m a blogger. And that’s just not how we do things.

Click.

Post.

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WITN?: In sort-of defence of Britain’s ridiculous libel laws

I’m writing this from the ‘club section’ (whatever that is) from San Francisco’s AT&T Park where, if I understand the scoring correctly (I don’t), the Cubs are leading the Giants 4-1. I’ve just eaten my second hot dog and I’m debating whether to buy a baseball cap emblazoned with the words ‘Go Giants’. I also just turned to my British friend Andrew to make an amusing American pop culture reference, prefacing my observation with the word “dude…”.

I mention all of this for two reasons. First, I hope it will make you understand why my column this week reads like it’s been written by a man distracted by the fear of at any minute being beaned by a baseball, and second so you’ll appreciate all of the efforts I’m making to Love America.

You see, over the past weeks I’ve realised how sensitive you former colonials are to foreigners opining on any aspect of your country, particularly if we compare it to our own. Almost two weeks after Techcrunch 50, I’m still getting hate mail over my post suggesting that your flag be moved two feet from the stage to the main floor. Much of the abuse glosses over the issue at hand and focusses instead on the indisputable fact that I am a freedom-hating socialist who would gladly see the American flag used to mop up the blood of terrorist martyrs. (Weirdly this is an accusation that I’ve heard far more frequently since joining TechCrunch than when I worked at the Manchester Socialist Guardian of Kabul.)

So again, then, let me clarify that I love America. If there were a baseball game between the Terrorists and America, I would be as crestfallen as the next man were the Terrorists to win. Ok? Are we cool, America? Good. Now hopefully I can safely and rationally talk about the differences between the British and American systems of libel law. In particular the fact that, whatever Michael Arrington might say, Yours might not be better than Ours.

More than enough has been written about Techcrunch’s – and Arrington’s – run in with UK defamation law, but I’ll sum it up in a nut for newbies. Back in July a former TechCrunch UK editor called Sam Sethi sued TechCrunch, and Arrington, over a Crunchnotes post titled ‘The Fact And Fiction Of Sam Sethi‘. In the post, Arrington recounted the sorry tale of Sam’s departure from TechCrunch and subsequent founding of a rival blog network called BlogNation. It’s a story of lies, money, spectacular mismanagement and ultimately abysmal failure – a story eerily close to my own, but without the scorned women and prison cells.

But whereas my story ended with pseudo redemption, and an – ahem – bestselling book, Sam’s ended with denial, rage and him bringing a ridiculous libel suit – brought in the English courts – against TechCrunch. Advised by lawyers that it would cost upwards of half a million pounds ($750,000) to defend the case in the UK, Arrington and Techcrunch declined to participate, leading – ridiculously – to a default judgment in Sethi’s favour.

You can understand then, why, Michael might have issue with the libel system in the country of my birth. And it gets worse: shortly after the judgment, documents came to light which showed that Sethi should never have been running BlogNation in the first place. Following the collapse of a previous business, he had been barred from being a director in England and Wales but due to an administrative fuck-up, this ban hadn’t been entered onto the statutory database. The situation has now been remedied and yet, despite the ban and the fact that Sam has apologised to Arrington and admitted fault, the judgment stands, effectively preventing Michael from visiting the UK.

And yet, and yet…

Reading Arrington’s post on the subject – entitled ‘UK Libel Law Is Out Of Control. We Know From Experience‘ – I can’t quite bring myself to entirely agree with him. Not about the Sethi stuff – Sam lied repeatedly to me and everyone else about being struck off as a director, and so deserves every bad word Michael says about him – but rather with the wider argument that libel law in the UK is in complete disarray because it allowed a UK litigant to sue an American citizen and website over something published online from the US.

Libel tourism gone mad! Wither freedom of speech?!

Hmmmm.

Like most legal issues, it’s actually a bit more complicated than that. Sethi is a British citizen who was – in his deluded mind at least – libeled by a website published in the US, but available to read – obviously – in the UK. For that reason there is, prima facie, absolutely nothing wrong with his bringing his ridiculous and pointless action in the UK courts.

After all, thanks to the Internet, he was defamed (in his mind), on British soil where he has a (I’m trying here to channel my laughter through my keyboard as I write these words) reputation to defend. Libel tourism – where a foreign litigant can sue a foreign publication on British soil because one copy of the publications was sold there – is evil, but that’s not what’s happened here.

This is an unpopular point of view, even amongst my own countrymen, but I actually quite like the harshness of British libel law. For a start it puts the burden of proof on the person making the libelous statement. If you accuse me of being a bad guy then it’s up to you to prove it’s true. If you can’t, you lose. And the penalties for losing are harsh: really harsh, which is how it probably should be. Unlike me, most Brits care about their reputation and standing in the community, and it’s hard to put a value on its loss.

Really, when it comes to freedom of speech, it’s America that has the more ridiculous system. Thanks to the First Amendment and a presumption in the US that public figures are fair game, I am free to make up almost any bullshit I like about an American in the public eye without him being able to sue. “Michael Arrington fucks swans!” See, there you go. It’s actually kinda fun! And thanks to the Internet, Arrington’s fictitious swan-molesting ways will soon be known to the world. Hell, if TechCrunch is a credible source, they might even make it to Wikipedia. God Bless America.

Really the Sethi vs Techcrunch case has nothing to do with freedom of speech and everything to do with how ridiculously cheap and easy it is for a delusional litigant to bring a nuisance lawsuit in the UK against a journalist who is telling the truth. A journalist who then has to spend a small fortune defending the action. If the defendant is from outside the UK then their only real choice in these circumstances is to decline to participate, leading to a criminally unfair judgment against them. If they’re from the UK, their best hope is to settle and hope to keep their house. Either way, the delusional litigant wins, and the truth loses.

Again, though, we’d struggle to look to America and find a better system. It was you people, after all, who gave the world the idea of no-win-no-fee lawyers: bloodsucking ambulance chasers who will gladly help me sue McDonalds for making their coffee with boiling water, rendering it unsafe for me to pour over my baby’s head. In most cases outside of libel, defending a nuisance lawsuit in the US is just as expensive, and just as pointless as it is in the UK. If our system is a mess then so is yours.

Also, it’s all too easy for Americans to criticise our system without suggesting a better one. It’s like those people who stand on street corners yelling “stop the war” or “free healthcare for all” or “swans don’t put out” without demonstrating how they would solve the problem if they were in charge. Those who suggest that Britain would be better off with a US First Amendment style system are just plain wrong. Particularly in the Internet age, lies can get halfway around the world before the truth has found a decent WiFi connection. For that reason we need a system whereby liars are scared shitless from posting untruths in the UK, lest they find themselves in front of a bewigged judge capable of handing down an almost unlimited fine. It’s the only language these people understand.

So what is the solution to improving the UK libel system? As always, I have the answers…

First, we needs an immediate ban on no win no fee lawyers in all but means-tested personal injury claims. If a litigant really thinks they have a claim against a publication – foreign or domestic – then they need to put their money where their reputations is. If they can’t do that then you might ask what value they put on their reputation in the first place.

Second, it’s ridiculous that litigants can sue individual journalists when their work appears in professionally edited publications. In Arrington’s post, he referred to the case of Simon Singh, a British journalist who was sued personally by the British Chiropractic Association for an article he wrote in the Guardian. The BCA chose to sue Singh personally rather than the Guardian, thus exposing the reporter to personal ruin no matter whether he successfully defends the action or not. Only a mentally retarded chimp would think that’s fair.

Third, libel tourism could be wiped out at a stroke if there was a requirement for litigants bringing action under English law to actually be British citizens. This wouldn’t have helped in Sethi vs Arrington, but it would certainly deal with the vast majority of outrageous abuses of jurisdiction.

But by far the most important change that needs to be made to English libel law is to scrap the so-called ‘multiple publication rule‘. This is the decision, made by the English courts in 1849, that every time a publisher makes a new copy of a libelous article, they are considered to have republished – and repeated – the libel. Which is important because English law imposes a statutory limitation of one year after publication for someone to bring a defamation action.

With the advent of the Internet, the multiple publication rule has caused havoc. In the eyes of the law, every time a user accesses a copy of an article published online, the act of the publisher’s web server delivering it is considered to be a republication. In other words, as long as something remains in an online archive, it is constantly being republished and there is no time restriction on someone suing over it.

This is how Sethi was able to dither for well over a year after Arrington’s ‘Fact and Fiction’ post was first published before taking action, and it’s why the UK remains such an attractive place to bring a libel suit. Without the multiple publication rule, his suit against TechCrunch would have come too late, and been thrown out before it even started.

The good news is that the English justice system is already – forgive the pun – on the case. Earlier this month, the Ministry of Justice began a consultation over scrapping the multiple publication rule. In its place they are considering a single publication rule – where the clock begins ticking when the libel is first published, and stops either one or three years (they haven’t decide yet) later. After that, publishers who keep articles archived electronically would have what’s called a ‘qualified privilege’ defence where they couldn’t be sued for leaving what they believe to be accurate statements online after that time.

If the consultation results in a change of law then it won’t solve the problem entirely – the UK still needs to get rid of no-win, no-fee lawyers and to clamp down on no-British litigants and the suing of individual journalists – but it would be a major leap forward. One which would have stopped Sethi in its tracks and move the British libel system closer to being The Best In The World.

And this, America, is where you come in. If like Arrington, you think the English system is screwed, I urge you to get involved in repairing it. The Ministry of Justice has published a list of questions that it wants your answers on here. Go answer them; pretend you’re British if you have to.

I’ve already sent in my answers and I’m going to do my best to convince Arrington to do the same when he gets back from vacation in Hawaii.

Or at least he claims he’s on vacation. Do they have swans in Hawaii?

Just saying.

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WITN?: Brazil nuts, American idiots and whoever else I have to upset around here to keep my job

Glancing at TechCrunch late on Thursday evening, I immediately realised there was trouble afoot.

A few hours earlier, Sarah Lacy had published a post about the difficulties she’d had receiving her visa to Brazil to research her book and report on start-ups for TechCrunch. I’d read the post and sympathized with Sarah’s frustration. The problem, apparently, had been caused by an ‘upgrade’ of Brazilian embassy computer systems and the resulting havoc had affected everyone from journalists to business people to the coach of a national football – sorry, ’soccer’ – team.

As Sarah wrote, it also meant that she would now not be able to meet any of the scores of startups who had hoped to speak to a visiting TechCrunch reporter. If I were one of those startups, I’d be pissed. I’d be pissed at my government for not getting their technology together, and I’d be pissed generally that I’d missed an opportunity to showcase my business on a foreign stage. I might even post a comment saying as much.

Glancing at TechCrunch on Thursday evening, then, I half-expected to see maybe a couple of dozen comments on the post. But no. There were hundreds. Almost 500 in fact, and just about every one of them was attacking Sarah specifically, and American visa policy, generally.

How dare you insult Brazil!” they cried, “You stupid Americans demand that Brazilians have visas to visit your country; why shouldn’t we do the same?” Some of them used words like “reciprocity” and “pay back”. One even called Sarah a ‘gringa’, which was cute and in no way played to a stereotype. Many – who clearly knew all about the months of planning Sarah had done for her trip – angrily suggested that she should have started applying from the visa earlier. A vocal minority was additionally livid that the post was illustrated by a mashup – culled from Google images – of the Brazilian flag and the ‘EPIC FAIL’ meme. Some demanded criminal penalties for the outrage. It was whatever the Portuguese is for a train wreck.

Puzzled, I read the post again. Clearly I’d missed something on my first reading. Obviously Sarah – who, let’s remember, has been TC’s most vocal advocate for relaxing US visa laws for foreign entrepreneurs – had called for Brazil to be bombed back to the stone age, or suggested its womenfolk were unclean. But no, she really had just complained that a computer upgrade had inconvenienced her and thousands of other travelers who already had been approved for visas but who hadn’t been delivered them on the day they were promised.

As a foreigner on these shores, the subject is one close to my heart, which is why I’d read – and sympathised with – the post in the first place. Not long ago, I went through the visa process to relocate to the US from the UK. I had a far smoother experience than many of my European friends who are still flailing around in H1B or O1 hell, but I still had to struggle through a dull process of bureaucracy, money, police checks, paperwork, money, waiting, interviews, money and bullshit. And money.

In fact, the only truly smooth aspect came right at the end, once I’d been approved for the visa and was told my passport would be returned three days later. With that, I booked my flight and, sure enough, at exactly 9am on the third day, a courier arrived on my doorstep clutching my newly visa-d passport. Had there been an unexpected delay after being told I could make travel plans, I’d have been furious: there’s no excuse for missing deadlines when you’ve promised they’ll be met. Reciprocity and forward planning have nothing to do with it; it’s just bureaucratic sloppiness. On that front, the Brazilian embassy had failed. Epically.

And what about this flag business? I mean, seriously. If I understand you correctly, Brazilians, Photoshopping your national symbol with a joke meme is an unforgivable affront to your nationhood, and yet painting it across your girlfriend’s breasts at a soccer game or screen-printing it on a tiny g-string is a wonderful celebration of national identity? Maybe we Brits are just under-sensitive, but frankly you could Photoshop a defaced picture of the queen onto our flag and you wouldn’t hear a peep of complaint. Except perhaps that you stole our idea.

So if it wasn’t the visa issue, or the flag, really the only justification I could find for the Brazilian commenters’ rage was Sarah’s remark that her husband was worried about her traveling to the country due its reputation for violence.

This is of course typical American paranoia of all points foreign. “The natives are savages! We won’t be able to walk the streets in safety!” they whine, in a hideously unfair characterisation of a gentle, welcoming people. No wonder some Brazilians were upset with Sarah, to the point where they posted comments threatening to spit in her face and rape her.

And that’s where I realized that something was terribly awry. Sarah writes a story about bureaucratic ineptitude and broken promises, illustrated by a mildly clichéd Photoshop, and her safety is threatened by a mob of lunatic Brazilians. Arrington disses a few start-ups over the years and a mental German spits in his face at DLD. Erick writes a controversial headline about a multinational music service and the threats get so serious that TechCrunch has to call in the cops to protect its staff.

And that’s just the foreigners. The Americans are just as bad: last week Vivek Wadhwa received hundreds upon hundreds of furiously xenophobic responses to his guest post – many suggesting that the Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Executive in Residence at Duke University was unwelcome on American soil. His crime? Suggesting that it should be easier for skilled foreign workers to get H1B visas. A suggestion, by the way, which was later linked to and supported by Newt Fucking Gingrich.

I don’t get it. Where am I going so wrong?

I was hired by TechCrunch specifically to be the controversial one. Unlike the rest of the writers here, who have actual reporting credentials, my whole shtick is saying inflammatory things and inciting furious debate among morons. To that end, in my very first column I declared war on anonymous commenters, making it absolutely clear how much I hate every last one of them, and even threatening to bludgeon the little basement-dwellers to death with their own Wil Wheaton action figures.

But nothing.

Since then I’ve tried to up my game. I’ve promoted scientifically dubious fad cleanses, I’ve called out lying company spokespeople and threatened to name and shame them, I’ve applauded Google for its anti-trust activities and suggested that Microsoft would commit genocide if it was commercially expedient. I’ve written an entire column attacking Drudge-reading Republican ditto heads who object to Obama’s attempts to control the Internet. Hell, I’ve even admitted to once being a magician.

But still nothing.

How is it possible I’ve attacked Republicans and not received my own death threats? What’s the point in them deliberately misinterpreting the spirit of the Second Amendment if they’re not going to use the handguns strapped to their thighs to intimidate a foreigner? Where are my globules of Teutonic sputum or my sickening threats of violence? What does a man have to do around here to get threatened with rape by a Brazilian?

Frankly, I’m starting to get worried for my job. Every week Arrington gets off on threatening to fire me – but so far I’ve clung on to the gig, mainly because I keep convincing him that I’ll be a source of controversy and excitement. And yet week in, week out I’m getting my ass handed to me by just about everyone else on TechCrunch. And they’re not even trying.

Clearly I have to up my game. Over the coming weeks the gloves are going to have to come off. I’m going to have to go all-out with deliberately provocative headlines and racist ledes in the hope of prompting a mob of moronically illiterate textually-violent misogynist dickweeds to abuse me. Only then will my controversy crown be restored and my survival here assured.

From next week then, you can look forward to column titles like…

“Did the state of Israel just pass data to the RIAA?”

“CBS’s acquisition of Last.fm: smartest American deal with a German since Werner von Braun?”

“US education hasn’t produced a decent one since Oklahoma: so why is it so hard for foreign bombers to get H1B visas?”

“The Fanboys from Brazil: why Latin American Mac users are even more insufferably smug than those in the rest of the world”

“The French are Lazy, Americans are fat, Brits have bad teeth, Palestinians are all terrorists and the Swiss got rich on Nazi gold – and it’s all the fault of AT&T”

“Fuck you, Belgium”

…and probably something about South Africans being boorish and ignorant. They’re always good for a fight.

And then, after I write those, I’m imploring the comment idiots amongst you to do your worst. Once you’ve finished skimming my words, misinterpreting my every premise and forming your knee-jerk, nationalistic response – please, please be sure to hack it out in the comments. Don’t worry about accuracy, grammar or even basic literacy: it’s a numbers game and you freaks are my last hope at keeping this gig.

After all, where will I be without my job as Controversialist in Residence at TechCrunch? Destitute, that’s where. A poor, jobless, bitter loser with a strange accent, forced to beg for money from my neighbors to survive.

Oh, God, I’ll be Welsh.

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