Use and abuse of anonymous blogging
The Los Angeles Times appears to have missed the point in its suspension of reporter-blogger Michael Hiltzik, and reports in the Washington Post and New York Times do the same. Their collective error undermines both the free speech of reporters and the good name of anonymous blogging.
Hiltzik, says the L.A. Times, has been suspended because
he posted items on the paper’s website, and on other websites, under names other than his own. That is a violation of The Times ethics guidelines, which requires editors and reporters to identify themselves when dealing with the public.
To be sure, Hiltzik’s apparent behavior was unethical, but not in the way the L.A. Times says. The problem was that, as exhaustively documented by “Patterico’s Pontifications,” the conservative blog that unmasked the Hiltzik pseudonyms, he was using pseudonyms deceptively. They were “sock puppets” to defend arguments he made in his blog. Hiltzik even pointed readers of his blog to the pseudonymous comments he made elsewhere and he plainly suggested that they indicated a groundswell of support where none existed.
Journalists who deceive and distort are unethical and should be disciplined. But, while the ability to use pseudonyms may have assisted Hiltzik in his ploy, that does not justify a broad rule that reporters always “identify themselves when dealing with the public.” Like most MSM outlets, the L.A. Times has sweeping ethics guidelines that foreclose most opportunities for reporters to engage in public debate on their own behalf – they cannot give money to candidates or put bumper stickers on their cars. Putting aside the merits of those rules, why should reporters necessarily lose the limited opportunity to participate in debate anonymously by posting unsigned comments on blogs and the like?
Yet the L.A. Times, along with the New York Times and, to a lesser extent, Washington Post media scold Howard Kurtz, all define Hiltzik’s infraction as the mere use of pseudonyms, not the deceptive way he used them. As a result, they imply there is something dirty about anonymity itself.
This is particularly galling because, if any crowd should be eager to defend the importance of anonymous speech, it’s the journalists who rely on it every day when including anonymous sources in their news reports. Of course, anonymity can be abused in that setting too (see, e.g., Scooter Libby leaking to Judith Miller of the New York Times). But I am sure these newspapers would agree with me that the remedy to abuses by anonymous sources is not a ban on them!
Ironically, Patterico, the blogger who first revealed Hiltik’s secret identity, has been making a similar argument: “It’s not the pseudonyms. It’s the sock-puppetry!”
UPDATE: Laura Heymann asks some similar questions this morning at Concurring Opinions.
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