Blagged by a blog, hacks should pull up their socks

The popular American online newspaper Huffington Post launched its UK edition last week and with the site reading like a who’s who of the political, social and entertainment elite, one would assume that blogging is as good a form of journalism as any. Co-founder Arianna Huffington knows that much of her brand’s success is engagement with the audience and “the incredible impact social media can have in accelerating change”. Ordinary citizens have slowly become instrumental in the modern news making process and their shouts are finally being heard, but as social media and the blogosphere expand it’s difficult to see whether it’s a step forward for democracy or just more online noise pollution.

Today social networking, championed by the masses, is a force to be reckoned with. Facebook has more than 750 million users and every day the world writes an equivalent of a 10 million page book in Tweets. The internet’s power to impact on the news has been evident in the News of the World phone hacking scandal of late, where the online campaign to boycott the newspaper influenced the Murdoch Empire’s decision to discontinue the 168 year old publication. News of the scandal spread like wildfire and became, in a matter of days, the whole nation’s chosen topic of conversation-- starting on their laptops and ending over a pint in the pub. It seems the internet has developed into quite the formidable forum for debate, comment and opinion.

A great example of the proliferation of citizen journalism is the blog ‘A gay girl in Damascus’ which attracted coverage from the most prestigious of news corporations, the BBC, The Guardian and CNN to name a few. These publications’ respected journalists; moved by the plight of Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari- a young lesbian woman living in politically unstable Muslim Syria, hung on the blogger’s every word and recounted her tales of trials and tragedy to their sizeable readerships. Sharing her personal struggle with her sexuality set against the backdrop of a war-torn and fiercely religious country, Amina’s experiences appeared to cast a spotlight on serious political issues surrounding the repressive Syrian regime.

The power of the blog came into full force when her ‘cousin’ alerted followers that Amina had been abducted by security forces, triggering online campaigns and causing the US embassy to launch an investigation on her whereabouts. Little did they know Amina was in fact the alter-ego of Tom MacMaster-- a 40 year old American with a life-size imagination, living out his bizarre fantasy from the comfort of his bedroom in the pretty Scottish city of Edinburgh. Quite a coup for the Masters student, who transformed his image from an unsightly unknown to an attractive, compelling wordsmith; racking up almost 100,000 page views and counting some of the world’s most established journos among his admirers. Eventually MacMaster confirmed growing suspicions that his blog was fictional, but the plot continued to thicken when it emerged ‘Amina’ was pursuing an online relationship with ‘Paula Brooks’, the editor of pro-homosexuality site ‘Lez Get Real’- another site posing under a false premise. Both transpired to be middle aged male bloggers, no doubt getting a kick out of successfully seducing a lesbian, completely oblivious to each others true gender – the irony is far from lost.

‘A Gay Girl in Damascus’ sparked outrage in the blogosphere with many Syrians claiming MacMaster has taken away their voice in true ‘boy who cried wolf’ style, potentially damaging the opportunity for Middle Eastern citizens to have their say. It’s worth remembering, however, that reputable news companies handed ‘Amina’ the megaphone in the first place. What began as a personal project ended up a worldwide phenomenon – all because professional journalists fell for the story hook line and sinker. An industry that prides itself on holding others to account and exposing wrongdoing forgot the golden rule of journalism, check, double check and bloody well check the facts again- and were too busy pulling on the nation’s heartstrings to investigate the credibility of their sources.

There’s no doubt that the Internet has finally put the citizen on the news map, albeit armed with the handy shield of the computer screen. There’s a lot of stuff on the web that is fake, misleading and incorrect. Unfortunately, it’s a fact of life that comes with the territory of being the biggest advance in communication in our time. The age old warning of online predators is more relevant today than ever and professional journalists would do well to remember that you can’t always trust people you meet on the net.

Traditional news media have been given an opportunity to play God with the swathes of information now available and must hand pick the wheat from the chaff – instead lazy journalism has left them scraping the barrel. Many attempts at citizen journalism do become valid sources of information, but MacMaster isn’t the first and certainly won’t be the last of the online con artists. With so many different voices vying for attention, internet noise pollution is rife but manageable. The noise only becomes problematic when journalists neglect the basic principles of their profession and allow unchecked information to disguise itself as news. After all, ‘Amina’ was only telling a tale, not writing the front pages of a bestselling newspaper.

Revolt against the Hack King

After years of criticising PR people for trying to manipulate the media using sneaky tactics, suddenly the journalist finds themselves in the dock. The News of the World has this week been accused of the most unimaginable corruption that not only goes against basic media ethics, but makes a farce of their own campaigns. In the wake of revelations that Murdoch’s clan tapped the phones of murdered schoolgirls Millie Dowler, Sarah Payne and countless war widows, News International’s support for Help the Heroes and NOTW’s notorious anti paedophile movement seems nothing short of a sick joke.

It appears that a few journalists may have misplaced their halo and temporarily fallen out of favour with the public. The Murdoch Empire reportedly lost around £600m when lucrative advertisers pulled out, but this proved to be just pennies to the media mogul as News Corporation announced the heckled publication was coming to an end just moments ago. The fact that they can so swiftly pull one of Britain’s bestselling newspapers off the shelves in the blink of an eye speaks volumes about how insignificant that one media title is to the Murdoch Empire. While the masses have successfully boycotted the newspaper in disgust it seems we are all forgetting a few key details. News of the World is owned by News International, which is of course owned by News Corporation, owned by Rupert Murdoch but his power doesn’t stop there. His ventures span all across the media and in fact the world. A few advertisers pulling out of one Sunday issue is nothing more than a pinprick-- cancelling a profitable paper is merely an inconvenience. If anything the furore surrounding the NOTW will probably increase Murdoch’s readership – place your bets now on how long it will take to launch The Sun on Sunday? The last NOTW edition this weekend will no doubt be its best selling issue.

It’s a sad truth but people will flood towards the corporation’s other newspapers as though these appalling acts of insensitivity and criminality never even happened. It’s likely that the newspaper ‘watchdog’ the media funded Press Complaints Commission will get off lightly too, even though they’ve proved themselves to be so toothless they need dentures.

Sitting in a Media Standards Trust lecture last night about the dangers of ‘Churnalism’, where ‘Press Release’ is branded a dirty phrase, we can’t help but wonder about the naivety and supercilious attitudes of some of the journalists at present. The world’s most dominant media Empire is accused of tampering with evidence in a murder inquiry and hacking the phones of grieving families but the alleged villain of the evening, at this conference anyway, is the PR exec. Perhaps the one saving grace of this whole murky affair is that the journalist is no longer the hero. Only a few might have been dragged kicking and screaming from their pedestal but its high time we saw the industry as a whole in a new light, flaws and all. We’re pretty sure ‘democracy’ doesn’t involve a private detective with a penchant for ear wigging, expensive advertising contracts that limit reporting on important news, or an unrestrained media Empire.

The time is right for politicians, businesses, regulators and the public to finally feel brave enough to pick a fight with the guy who buys ink by the barrel and puts tits on page 3.