I just read the Salon piece 'Rabid Watchdog' about the media accountability
website
Mediawhoresonline.com.
I read it assuming the article was about the website.. what they do and
why they do it, and
maybe some insight on how they hold the media accountable. Or possibly
a review of the
accuracy of the website. The article did start out that way, maybe a little
bit, by relaying the
experience a CNN reporter had when the MWO website advised their readers
to contact him.
The Salon article reprinted quotes from two 'of the worst emails' sent
to the CNN reporter.
But after a few short examples of what the MWO website says or does, Salon
writer Jennifer
Liberto then decides there is no way of knowing what the website does unless
you have the
name or 'true identity' of the person who owns the website.
The Salon writer then reports her quest to find the identity of the owner
of the website. After
extensively researching this she is unable to determine the 'true identity'
of the owner. The
author then goes on a research binge to prove that if a website doesn't
reveal the owner then
there is no way to know what the website is doing, or what the motives
are of the website.
Ms. Liberto spends the last half of the four page Salon article attempting
to prove this point.
And it appears the author spent a LOT of time and effort to research this
issue.
After contacting numerous Washington 'insiders' who all denied having any
connection to the
owner of MWO, the author then contacts every MWO contributor she can find,
and questions
them about who owns the website. After an exhaustive search, Ms. Liberto
is unable to find
any MWO contributors who share her extreme concern of 'who owns the MWO
website' and is
left with this quote from a contributor: "You definitely get the impression
that she's [MWO
owner] just an angry citizen, like the rest of us," .
The Salon author then goes on a detective research project to find the
name of the website
owner from .com registration records and anything related to purchasing
a website.
After this detective work fails, Ms. Liberto then researches the 'legality'
of someone owning a
website anonymously. She contacts an intellectual property attorney at
the New York law firm
of Gibney Anthony and Flaherty for advice on why it is wrong to be an anonymous
owner of a
website.
Again, Ms. Liberto is left with this quote from the expert attorney: "Any
person can publish
anything anonymously any time in any medium," and "That is a very fundamental
corollary to
freedom of the press."
Unhappy with that response, Ms. Liberto then queries her legal source about
a possible lawsuit
to force the owner of MWO to be revealed, and gets this reply: "You've
got to do more than
merely file a lawsuit and use it as a fishing expedition,"
Still unhappy with here findings the author obviously checked with more
sources on filing a
lawsuit when she states: "Besides, as several experts also pointed out,
a miffed journalist
would have a hard time proving that being labeled a "media whore" constitutes
defamation."
Hmmm, go figure.
Undaunted, the author continues here research quest to get the answer she
desires.
Ms. Liberto then contacts Verisign, who handles .com registration on the
Internet, and inquires
about the legality or a possible 'false identity' lawsuit against the MWO
owner. But the Verisign
spokesman tells her "the requirement is in effect voluntary".
Still unhappy with the response of yet another source, Ms. Liberto then
contacts Chris
Hoofnagle, legislative counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center
in Washington.
Who tells her: "Many, many people provide false information to the registry,
even those who
are not publishing anonymous Web sites, simply to avoid spam".
But this sources next comment does, finally, provide a slim ray of light
for Ms. Liberto ..
"Verisign hasn't the time or the energy to verify a few million sites,
Burns said, so false domain
contacts are usually only examined upon inquiry by a third party, often
an attorney."
Having finally found a source who reveals a longshot chance at a lawsuit,
Ms. Liberto runs off
to research this and comes up with proposed legislation that would make
false .com
registration a criminal offense. But after looking into this bill she unfortunately
finds that
"Passage, however, appears unlikely."
Ms. Liberto then decides to drop the 'legal' angle and adopts an 'ethical'
angle against owning
a .com anonymously. She contacts Aly Colón, on the ethics faculty
of the Poynter Institute,
who tells her "I think every citizen should feel free to hold the media
accountable; it's better
for the media."
I have to tell you, Ms. Liberto starts to sound like someone who is uncontrollably
obsessed, I
wouldn't go as far as using the word 'stalker' but it does give you a little
bit of a creepy feeling
after reading the lengths this person is willing to go, just to satisfy
her curiosity.
But the thing that bothers me the most, is the authors original idea that
you have to know the
exact identity of the owner in order to know what the website is up to
or its 'agenda'.
I wish Ms. Liberto would have contacted me during her research frenzy,
I probably could have
saved her a lot of time... If you want to know what a websites agenda is,
why not just READ
the website? Its not a 'secret' website in any way, actually it's available
from any phonejack
on the entire planet earth, literally!
This may come as a huge surprise to Ms. Liberto, but I read my local newspaper
all the time
and I have no idea who owns it. And I don't have to know the Social Security
number of the
writers to know what their 'agenda' is either, all I have to do is READ
what they write.
I do it all the time and haven't spent one dime on attorney fees.
Ms. Liberto should try that sometime, if nothing else, it might save her from weeks of legal research.