Andrew Gilligan: sockpuppet and sockpuppeting
For those not in the know, a sockpuppet is…
…an online identity used for purposes of deception within an Internet community. In its earliest usage, a sockpuppet was a false identity through which a member of an Internet community speaks while pretending not to, like a puppeteer manipulating a hand puppet.
It’s a practice you see on the top blogs when their owners, unwilling or unable to defend their mistakes or arguments, appear in their own comment threads pretending to be other people. It’s a base cowardice really. Unfortunately, the example has now been set and the disease is starting to spread.
An early adopter is the Evening Standard’s Andrew ‘45 minutes’ Gilligan. He’s been caught leaving Gilligan-aggrandising or defensive comments under a variety of pseudonyms on online articles by him, or that concern or criticise him. When asked directly to confirm or deny whether he’d been dishonest, he chose to ignore the opportunity to clear his name.
Why does this matter? Many people (including those guilty of it, if truth be told) think and say that this issue is geeky, nerdish, complex. However, it goes to the heart of things like honesty and integrity (easily understood concepts, no?) particularly when they concern the actions of an investigative journalist and bloggers who like to portray themselves as the cream of their medium.
Isn’t the reputation of journalists low enough? Why trust Gilligan on anything else? The Evening Standard tore into the BBC over fake competition winners. And yet here’s one of its leading columnist indulging in much the same.
Like I said, this kind of crap is spreading, metastasising. It’s leaked from the self-serving big boy blogs and is entering the mainstream. (Gilligan’s learned the technique to the last detail, even down to accusing his questioners of stalking and obsession.) The top blogs have demonstrated how it can be done and how you can get away with it. Lazy journalist looking to blogs for copy to pilfer can be relied upon not to examine methods too closely and those pointing out these practices can be easily smeared (see above).
But it poisons discussion and trust. God knows what this means for proper, informed and honest debate on blogs and online forums in the run up to the next election but you can probably guess.
Update 22/11 @ 7.40am: A little boast - this post is now number one on google for Andrew Gilligan sockpuppet and number five for Andrew Gilligan sockpuppeting.
Posted on November 21st, 2008 at 6:49 pm
| See also • Andrew Gilligan and The Ailing Standards • Robert Sharp: The Impact of Blogs • Iraq: back to the stone age |
• Permalink • Trackback • Subscribe |
|
• Filed under Culture, media and sport |
• |
Isn’t the worst of this that Gilligan used to be on the right side? I think ’sexed-up’ was his coinage.
I don’t know about the false-identity stuff. I think it’s dodgy, and I hope I’m above those tactics. But I sort of understand it: most negative comments are trolls and probably multi-identity trolls. The whole thing is spin. Maybe the negative stuff was all one guy in a basement (initials A C).
I think my position, in as tight a nutshell as it will fit in, is: I think AG is a wanker, but I think Charlie Brooker is a wanker too. It’s arguments, not individuals or their tactics, which should matter here.
Reading that again, it sounded incredibly pompous. Sorry.
PS Sock puppets are away. Have to use real name again.
If you look back at it, Gilligan had Blair and co. by the balls, and fucked it up. That doesn’t mean we should pat him on the back and say ‘well, it’s the taking part that counts’. He had them *by the fucking balls*, and screwed up. This is because he’s a very poor journalist.
That he actually let himself in for all this shit by deliberately misquoting me in one of his Standard pieces is supremely ironic, don’t you think?
[...] of the kind of bloggers I’ve read and admired for years, guys like Justin McKeating (see his post) and 5CC - main targets : lying politicians and the corrupt media) to ask Andrew Gilligan to simply [...]
I agree with the above about Gilligan and the sexed up dossier. This could have made him the Woodward ‘n’ Bernstein of the day but instead he folded like origami.
[...] going to find it very hard to continue with his current style of journalism now he’s on everyone’s radar as a BS merchant, rather than just us [...]
Too true, Yoghurt-man.
O/T I fucking Larry Teabag - he’s a the funniest bloke on the whole web!
[...] answer out of The Evening Standard’s bang-to-rights sock-puppeteer Andrew Gilligan about his online activies, Tim Ireland took the matter to the doorstep of the Standard’s owner, Associated [...]