grodscorp@grods.comEXCLUSIVE: Age “journalist” proves that Internet is evil
 | Posted by Scott on Sunday 7 January 2007, 10:20 am Categories: Blogosphere, Media, The Internet Tags: Tags: journalism, MichaelKirby, MySpace, newspapers, ReidSexton, TheAge, TheSundayAge |
HIGH Court judge Michael Kirby has been vilified and defamed by fraudsters who have stolen his identity to post offensive material on the popular internet site MySpace.
The identity thieves posed as the Australian judge to put sordid and sexually charged material on a fake Justice Kirby profile page.
So begins another fear-mongering, sensationalist and pathetic beat-up in the Sunday edition of Melbourne’s imploding broadsheet The Age. Like, shock horror, somebody pretended to be somebody else on the internet. And not only is this act “identity theft” but it “underlines the flimsy or fraudulent nature of much of the internet’s so-called ‘citizen journalism’.” Surely that odour I detect isn’t a whiff of fear about the threat to your pathetic dead-tree “journalism” from the blogosphere and non-mainstream media, Age? And who the hell has ever called MySpace citizen journalism? Long bow drawn.
I’m not entirely sure what The Age expects the Internet Police Force (IPF) to do about this terrible case but as “journo” Reid Sexton seems to imply there should definitely be, like, laws against stuff like this. And penalties. Maybe we should just turn the internet off.
Actually, turning off the internet would result in one important outcome: saving us from death by celebrity “news” overload every time one accidentally navigates towards theage.com.au.
There’s a clue in the article about what may have prompted The Sunday Age to feature such a non-story so prominently on page three:
When asked if MySpace could trace those who created the profile [the spokesperson] replied: “Yeah, potentially.”
But she refused a request to hand over details of the author and said any potential legal issues would be dealt with as they arose.
“Why would we give those details to you?” she said.
And damn straight too! Why would she hand over private customer details to an anonymous voice on the end of the phone claiming to be a “journalist” from The Age? But don’t dare suggest to a “journalist” that they aren’t omnipotent because their instinctive reaction to being disrespected is to seek revenge and vindication through lies, misinformation and sensationalism.
A much more sensible tone was adopted by senior law lecturer at Monash University, Dr Melissa de Zwart, in her comments for the news story. She outlined a possible legal course for Justice Kirby but qualified it all by saying, “ultimately people have to learn that what they see on the internet is not always correct.” Dr de Zwart knows that there are whole generations growing up now with a higher level of internet literacy than any Age hack will ever have. And just as there will always be dodgy crap going on in the internet tubes there will always be lies presented as truth in that self-proclaimed bastion of real journalism: newspapers.
Does Reid Sexton think we should ban newspapers too?
UPDATE: Call the IPF! John Howard’s identity has been stolen too! And Julia Gillard’s! And Kevin Rudd’s! And Kim Beazley’s! Oh, the humanity!
