The Great Pretenders: the Mainstream Media / Why the Blogosphere > “the Media”

Posted on May 25th, 2007 by Richard Catto 4,354 views

The Mail & Guardian and iAfrica.com published yesterday essentially the same story, in which they both discuss the blog of sa male prostitute, the recent cause of Patricia de Lille’s irate outburst against anonymous bloggers, but without actually saying that.

It’s dishonest. It’s disengenuous. It’s so totally totally fake, and I am weary of these "clever" manoeuvrings and word games that the mainstream media like to play.

So why do they do it? Why do they not report the story honestly and straight-forwardly?

Because according to the legal advice they received, that would leave them vulnerable to charges of helping the sa male prostitute blogger to spread his defamation. Exactly the same line that de Lille trotted out in her original complaint. And exactly the same advice which was contradicted yesterday by some other online legal expert, Reinhardt Buys.

But the mainstream media prefers to play it safe. They prefer to lay masking tape over the truth. They prefer to cloak reality in euphemisms and play their "air guitars of journalism".

They prefer to deceive their readers.

And that is why the Blogosphere is greater than the mainstream media.

We do not fear what you fear.

And that fearlessness enables us to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The Truth that you are too scared to tell.

And that scares the heck out of some, such as Patricia de Lille, who wants that we should FEAR.

We will not.

References:
iAfrica.com: Tell-all sex blog targets celebrities
mg.co.za: Tell-all sex blog targets SA celebrities
David Bullard: Name and shame offensive bloggers

Filed under air guitars of journalism, Blogosphere, blogs, David Bullard, iAfrica, Mail & Guardian, Patricia de Lille, sa male prostitute, Simon Grindrod | 11 Comments »

Quote of the Week by a Chinese blogger: “We are uncivilised”

Posted on May 25th, 2007 by Richard Catto 1,764 views

That we are.

Hahahahahaha!!!

Full quote:
"Uncivilised is one of the characteristics of the internet. We are uncivilised, and the internet reflects that fact."
- Wang Xiaofeng

Source:
China abandons blog identity plan

Filed under blogger, Blogosphere, blogs, Quote of the Week | 1 Comment »

Reinhardt Buys (legal opinion): safe to publish url that Patricia de Lille withheld

Posted on May 24th, 2007 by Richard Catto 5,693 views

An online legal expert, Reinhardt Buys, has echoed, in an article linked below, my original assessment of Patricia de Lille’s injunction against publishing the url of the blog she claims contains slanderous attacks against Simon Grindrod, Barry Ronge, and other South African notables.

De Lille threw up a legal smokescreen. She unanimously declared the offending blog to be slander and then used the threat  of legal repercussions to intimidate people into thinking twice about publishing the url themselves.

De Lille erred when she attempted to bully the South African Blogosphere and the mainstream Media into keeping her "dirty little secret".

Buys also pointed out that slander is a civil matter, and therefore neither the police nor the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) will get involved investigating her claims.

So why did de Lille react this way?

The short answer is that she most likely does not have good advisers to tell her the best way to handle online slander effectively.

If she wanted to discover the person’s identity, she needed to hire a private investigation agency to handle this discreetly. At this point, though, the person has no doubt gone to ground and may never log into that blog again.

It seems that de Lille has learned from this self-inflicted debacle and has affirmed that she is firmly in the corner of Free Speech. She just doesn’t want to be slandered online by anonymous bloggers.

Fair enough. No-one does.

Source:
De Lille’s blogging bark without legal bite

Earlier today, de Lille backed off from her "regulate the bloggers" stance and stated that she has always been a champion of Free Speech
De Lille – ‘I am a living example of fighting for freedom of speech’

Linking to the SA Male Prostitute blog could land you in court

Filed under Barry Ronge, Blogosphere, blogs, Independent Democrats, Patricia de Lille, Politics, Simon Grindrod | 5 Comments »

An email to Patricia de Lille: I won’t live behind an Iron Curtain!

Posted on May 23rd, 2007 by Richard Catto 4,438 views

Hi Patricia

I’m resisting the chilling effect you are having on South African bloggers.

I’ve published the url to sa male prostitute’s wordpress blog. So has Technorati.com, and Google and other web indexing sites.

I won’t live behind an Iron Curtain where South Africans are banned from discussing certain taboo topics.

The irony is that there are nearly 1 million blogs on wordpress.com. I’m not sure how you discovered that particular one. Perhaps it was emailed to you or Simon Grindrod?

There are so many many people online talking a load of trash that most of it is not taken seriously and paid much attention to. The attention span of bloggers can be measured in nanoseconds. It takes a jolt to make them pay particular attention to any one particular unknown blog. You provided that jolt when you complained about it. If you had simply ignored it, it would have remained completely obscure.

Now this story is all over the South African Blogosphere, and you have managed to whip up a lot of negative sentiment towards yourself and The Independent Democrats, because you have made South African bloggers feel threatened by your statements.

Fact is, you’re what is known as a "newbie" – someone who is new to the Internet. You’re not sure how to cope with what people say online.

We’ve all been there. So we can understand and relate to an over-reaction to something you read online.

I suggest you embrace the South African Blogosphere, not alienate it.

Cheers,
Richard Catto

Filed under Blogosphere, blogs, Independent Democrats, Patricia de Lille, Politics, Simon Grindrod | 2 Comments »