Tue 9 Feb 2010
Memo: How the internet works
Posted by Hannah under New media, Professional, Tributes
No Comments
As part of my professional life, I have been peripherally involved in the reporting of this terribly sad story.
Something like this is always going to evoke strong reactions, especially in somewhere like Shropshire, which is a generally low-crime region, where everyone knows everyone in their locality. It’s going also going to hit particularly hard in Oswestry, which was right next to the centre of a very similar story in 2008.
In both cases, Facebook provided the media with images of some of the victims and reaction quotes from people who knew them and random members of the general public who felt moved, whether directly involved or not, to give their two penn’orth.
I will say right up front that I have no idea whether the commenter I quote below knew the McFall family personally, and this is not intended as a personal attack on them in any shape or form, but anyone posting on this facebook fan page and the others that have sprung up since the tragedy are on shaky ground when complaining about newspapers taking quotes off websites in their reporting of this story.
The one objector I found says: “I find it quite distressing to learn that newspapers are taking messages from this page to include in their stories, and they are doing it WITHOUT seeking permision. Do these newspaper people have no compassion?”
Firstly, why is our objector distressed? I don’t understand. The vast majority of these comments are left by well wishers and entirely supportive. I am in no way an official spokesperson for my employers here, but from reading our coverage, it’s not like we evil newspaper people are lifting these remembrances and twisting them to suit our diabolical purposes in which we imply the dead girl had it coming. In fact, none of the coverage I’ve read anywhere has disrespected the memory of the McFall family by using these messages. Oh wait, it seems internet users have been the ones doing the disrespecting.
Secondly, if you don’t want your comments reproduced elsewhere, then for God’s sake, don’t put them on a public forum that anyone can access. These messages are in the public domain, anyone can sign up for facebook, anyone can read what’s been said. The comments have already been given away for free - they’re on a free to use site so they can’t be complaining about a lack of renumeration. It’s not an invasion of privacy, because people have willingly put these thoughts out onto a site that has almost no barriers to entry, on a page which has no barriers to view. I’ve lost track of how many gazillion users facebook is supposed to have these days, but trust me, reproducing these comments in newspaper articles is hardly going to have a significant impact on how many people read them compared with putting them on a website that has several hundred million users. A little perspective please. And don’t put anything online you’re not happy with someone else seeing.
Thirdly, the way this comment is written implies that we should be having compassion for the poor unfortunates whose comments on a public forum accessible to millions have been used without seeking their permission. I’m aware this wasn’t the intention of the poster, but poorly-phrased arguments annoy me.
Fourthly, as a newspaper person who was asked to ring round for reaction quotes to this story and often found I was breaking news of a suspected double murder and suicide to people who had previously no inkling that anything untoward had happened in their nice little town that day, I can confirm that we do indeed have compassion.
