By KAREN PARKER | County Line Publisher
The newspaper business has no shortage of annoyances, but right up at the top of the list are the anonymous letter writers. They come in the mail, and, at times, we get a call first asking if we will print a letter about this or that but “don’t use my name.”
The short answer is that my name can be found every week and if I set myself up for every crackpot and wing nut, why would I protect you?
The long answer is a bit more complicated. Publishers are responsible for the content of a newspaper and also can be hauled into court to face libel charges. It hardly matters if the letter is written by an anonymous person or Joe Blowhard. But at least we can call Joe and verify suspicious facts before publication.
It was a good system that kept publishers on their toes and out of court.
But that was then, and this is now. Enter the Internet and the era of anonymous postings. Ah, the possibilities are endless for busybodies with no character. Don’t like your competitor? Tell the world about the bugs in his restaurant food or the bugs in her motel mattress. Libel your neighbor, your ex-husband or your congressional representative. It’s the wild, wild west, and truth is irrelevant.
One of the worst offenders is a website called Topix. Based in Palo Alto, Calif., the site was originally formed as an aggregator that plucked news from other sources and categorized it by geography and topic. It’s a sad commentary on the media that in 2005, it was taken over by the Tribune Company, Knight-Ridder and Gannett Company. The scandalous gossip those companies would not dream of running in their print publications became the stock in trade of the site.
Readers love the stuff, and the company could sell ads by the boatload on the site.
Users are encouraged to comment on forums, even if the comments have nothing to do with the news items. Comments were posted anonymously and not removed even after victims of the scurrilous attacks complained to the company.
Not surprisingly, Topix never caught on in big cities, but rather became very popular in rural areas. Cheap gossip at the bar or down on the corner is popular in small towns, and what better way to spread it far and wide than the Internet?
The damage that can be done is simply astounding. A piece on Wisconsin Public Radio this weekend illustrated that. The case involved a hairstylist whose girlfriend was murdered by her ex-husband in a jealous rage. At first, the town had sympathy for his plight, but in time anonymous posts began appearing on Topix. The hairstylist was a pervert, a child molester and was likely the actual murderer. His children were tormented at school, old friends refused to speak to him, and his boss fired him when customers boycotted the hair salon where he worked. Finally, he was forced to move from the town in which he had lived for 16 years.
In frustration, he hired an attorney who demanded that Topix reveal the names of the anonymous posters. They, of course, refused. But the attorney uncovered a similar case in Texas in which the court ruled that Topix must surrender the information.
So who were the anonymous posters of the lies that nearly ruined this guy? It turned out be one woman who had registered with the site under various names, and then had conversations back and forth with herself to make it appear that many were aware of this guy’s “evil” ways.
As it turned out, she had worked with the hair stylist 10 years before at a dollar store and thought he looked at women employees with lust. Though the court fined her $410,000, she remained unrepentant and was convinced she had done society a service. Of course, she has no ability to pay, but nevertheless, the point was made.
Since this transpired, Topix has received about one subpoena a day. At one point, it stopped allowing negative posts, but website traffic dropped off precipitously. Perhaps as a moneymaking device, it began charging fees to remove negative material. After 30 states’ attorneys general protested, Topix stopped charging. Jack Conway, the Kentucky attorney general, said the charging scheme “smacked of having to pay a fee to get your good name back.”
Despite the huge court settlements levied against those who posted lies and ruined lives, Topix never has had to pay one thin dime.
Although newspapers, magazines and broadcast organizations can be sued for libelous statements made in print or in broadcast, federal law exempts Internet corporations such as Topix from lawsuits.
This is a great mystery to me. Maybe it has something to do with the Supreme Court considering corporations to be people for purposes of campaign donations. But when it comes to making them stand behind their words, nope, then they’re not people. Ah, the sweet mysteries of life.
