Events | 2009.06.24
A dangerous precedent | Belle de Jour
The ruthless unmasking of the blogger NightJack can only discourage others from speaking out
From day one as an anonymous blogger, you run the risk of being outed. Especially when your content is as explosive as that of NightJack . Even so, we anonymous bloggers have come to expect a level of consideration from the rest of the web. A certain sense of fair play. A feeling that, regardless what writers may think of each other, we would close ranks and protect any threat to a fellow blogger.
Unfortunately the Times seems never to have agreed with this, and thus – yet again – shamed itself with the ruthless unmasking of a blogger. Not content to level its blunderbuss at sex writers such as Abby Lee , it has named an award-winning police blogger who wrote frankly about his thoughts and experiences.
This case – because it went to court, with Nightjack trying to preserve an injunction preventing the Times from naming him – has set a legal precedent. A very dangerous precedent, to my mind. Because while certain content on his blog was ethically questionable – commenting on cases still sub judice is something most people in law enforcement would not do – the content of his writing in no way justifies a blanket ruling that blogging is a public act and therefore cannot be anonymous.
Tell this to bloggers and Twitterers in Iran or China, where internet content is highly controlled; if political content gets out at all, it must by definition be anonymous. Tell that to whistleblowers in any industry.
Because we live in relative safety and tend to believe in the fundamental decency of the law even if we sometimes grouse about it, some people have difficulty imagining situations in which anonymity and a public forum for speech are not only reasonable, but necessar, bedfellows.
Recently a similar occurrence also made news: the case against Margaret Haywood , the nurse who went undercover for Panorama. Yes, you could argue that she may have compromised the right to privacy of patients. But is that reason enough to say that her actions merited being fired, when what she was commenting on was abuse of the same patients, and earlier complaints had resulted in exactly zero changes to the NHS?
As a self-proclaimed whistleblower, Haywood was theoretically protected from professional reprimand, though of course that turned out not to be the case. Her career was ruined, and the only result is a tips hotline for nurses, which doesn\'t address the issues raised in any way. While NightJack never put himself in the whistleblowing camp explicitly, I think it is clear that any other police officers who might have thought about revealing what truly went on in their department will now think twice. And that, in case you need reminding, is a loss in a democratic society. We need people to tell the truth, to speak truth to power. Once that role was served by journalists. No longer.
In general, where the force of the response is out of proportion to the injury, I wonder what is being hidden. NightJack commented on cases, he presented his opinions. In reality what he wrote was no different to what countless other men and women on the beat would have admitted to in the pub. What, exactly, was so dangerous about him that it is considered in the public interest to name him in this way?
Do you wonder what else is being hidden from your view? I do. I am suspicious when any organisation cracks down hard on an individual. Now that the NightJack blog has been taken down, and archives appear to be unavailable, I can\'t go back and reread the entries. Because I, like many others, would appreciate a second reading – to figure out what exactly was so incendiary about his writing that the Times felt it necessary to destroy his career.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]gging-anonymous-whistleblowing
