Sharpe's Opinion

Anonymity, NightJack, and a Partial Defence of The Times

Wednesday 17th June, 2009 at 11:24 am

A Blogger, By Any Other Name…

I gave up on anonymity quite a while back (before I even started this blog) reasoning that at least if everyone knows my name I don’t have to worry about the possibility of people finding it out. It removes a little novelty, but it also diffuses any interest people might have in my identity.

One thing that’s always fascinated me, though, is the correlation between identity and readership in blogging. Looking through the Wikio top 20 political blogs, I can only see three¹ whose chief author/editor’s name I do not know.

There are plenty of successful pseudonymous bloggers, of course – but it doesn’t take much digging to find the real names of the bloggers behind Guido Fawkes, or Dizzy Thinks, or most of the other highly successful names in blogging. Rumour has it that even Devil’s Kitchen has an alter-ego with a rather more common name, though I of course wouldn’t dream of mentioning it for fear of the Satanic wrath such an action might engender.

It seems the only bloggers able to attain any great level of success without their names becoming a matter of public record are the ones who work inside our public services, who feel they must remain anonymous out of respect for the people mentioned in the anecdotes, which often cast a rather negative light on British public services. Out of fear that their words would be used against his constabulary. Out of, I’m sure, fear that writing hard-hitting and controversial critiques of their employer under their own name would see them at home nursing a shiny new P45 before you could say ‘free speech’.

The Outing of NightJack

The Orwell Prize winning police blogger NightJack fell into that rare mould, and now The Times, claiming to be doing a ‘public service’², have identified him, and his constabulary.

At this point, though, the only decent thing for you to to do is to go and read the proclamation of the People’s Republic on the matter, for clearly Alix Mortimer’s powers of articulation do far exceed my own³. Particularly this bit:

And now a newspaper has ruined the career of one of them. Because they want a good headline, and probably because they’re jealous of his audience reach and of the unstoppable advance of new media in general. They have ruined. His. Career. And this is not a man highly placed in public service, mark you. Not a man caught out in any wrongdoing. Just a man who wrote down what he thought.

Clearly, shame on The Times for forcing this man to identify himself and the people he has written about. Double shame on The Times, of course, when their actions are put in contrast with a piece on NightJack from The Independent nearly a month ago, which said:

Jack Night’s identity is known to The Independent but we have agreed not to reveal anything apart from the fact that he is a detective constable, aged in his mid-40s. His force area and his real name remain a secret.

I know it’s not just me who thinks this is horribly sad. It also sets a very ugly precedent – I don’t imagine Dr Crippen or Winston Smith slept quite so soundly as usual last night, nor any other public service blogger. I note with great sadness that Sierra Charlie’s blog has disappeared too, although I don’t know for certain when that happened (last post I read was on the 9th of June). If it’s connected to the naming of NightJack then triple shame on The Times.

The message The Times are sending appears to be quite clear: if you blog anonymously, and talk about real life, you’d better not be successful – because if you are, we’ll ruin your life. And just to make that point abundantly clear, the NightJack himself wrote a piece in today’s Times⁴:

My blog is gone now, deleted, slowly melting away post by post as it drops off the edge of the Google cache. The Police Dependants’ Trust is a few thousand pounds better off which may be the only good thing to have come out of this. My family life has changed in ways that they did not want and that is down to me. I deeply and bitterly regret the damage that will be done to the reputation of Lancashire Constabulary, that is also down to me. Next to that, my own career prospects are trivial.

In Defence of The Times

I can’t deny that this whole thing had me fizzing with anger. How dare they, I thought. How very dare they. What has NightJack ever done to them?

Unfortunately, though, that’s just about where the criticism of The Times ends. With shame, and bitter words, and accusations of their utter hypocrisy in refusing to name their ‘sources’ but delighting in exposing a blogger. Far from the creeping totalitarianism that Alix Mortimer alludes to, the actions of The Times are the actions of a free agent, exercising its right to free speech – even if that free speech means revealing the identity of a man we’d rather not know. Whether motivated by jealousy, or mean-spiritedness, or simply the belief that it will sell more newspapers, The Times are absolutely entitled to investigate and identify whomever they wish.

The idea of revealing the identities of those who would rather not be identified is hardly one that’s alien to bloggers, either. It was a blogger who revealed the identity of the killers of Baby P, running the risk of prejudicing a further case against one of them. It was a blogger who revealed the men in Number 10 who were spreading rumours and falsehoods about the opposition to the press. It was a blogger who went against a D-Notice and revealed that Prince Harry was fighting in Afghanistan, forcing him to return when what he wanted to do was fight for his country. That many bloggers “would be horrified to think that the law would do nothing to protect their anonymity if someone carried out the necessary detective work and sought to unmask them” is absolutely true, but those same bloggers balk at the law intervening to protect anonymous sources in the papers, or Government enquiries being kept secret, or criminals in ongoing trials being referred to only by pseudonym.

The flow of information that the internet has provided is not one way. If we want information to be free, we have to accept that these are the real consequences – and if we want to know all about the people who work inside our public services, we’re going to have to accept that others can and will discover and reveal their identities.

And therein, I think, we find the reason for the aforementioned correlation between a known identity and readership. You simply cannot attain so high a readership under a pseudonym without people being interested in, and discovering, your identity.

Freedom isn’t just the freedom to do whatever you want. It’s also the acceptance that others are allowed to do whatever they want. The Times may have acted shamefully, and out of spite and hypocrisy, but the alternative is for the law to decide, arbitrarily, who has freedom of speech and who does not.

Would that really be in the public interest?

Old Holborn, Harry’s Place and Mr Eugenides, for the record [↩]
Isn’t that the bit that just makes you want to scream? [↩]
I must also doff my cap to the ever-excellent Behind Blue Eyes, whose post on this is similarly spot on. [↩]
No link. [↩]

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Comments

if you blog anonymously, and talk about real life, you’d better not be successful

I guess I’ll be ok, then. )

There is a distinct air of inconsistency, though.

patently

June 17, 2009 at 11:39 am

The reaction is inconsistent too, though. It’s a terrible thing that an enquiry is held in private and a terrible thing that a blogger is identified.

Of course, ideally both would be public. Ideally public service workers wouldn’t have to blog anonymously, and their departments would be able to accept honest criticism for what it is. Ideally enquiries would be held in public.

We may be free to write anonymously, though, but others are still free to discover us and out us if they wish. That message seems to be getting lost a little, which is why I wrote the above.

Stu

June 17, 2009 at 11:48 am

I can’t criticise the logic of your post, but I would like to add one additional reason for the justifiable outrage at The Times’ actions. The media are supposed to be free agents and – if we take the rather patrician view – an important part of the democratic process. What The Times has done is sided with the establishment (or the state) and helped it to seek to close down quite genuine public criticism from Night Jack and others.

The media should be part of the establishment criticism process, not part of the attempts to close criticism down. There is one good thing that has come out of this: nobody will be under any illusions as to which side of the fence Rupert Murdoch’s business stands.

Blue Eyes

June 17, 2009 at 12:04 pm

I don’t see it, BE. The Times have no motivation other than what will sell newspapers and make money. If they reckon they can make money by outing a blogger, they’ll do it.

Besides, the biggest competition for the mainstream media is blogs. They’re just defending their own territory against an onslaught of bloggers who are looking to make them irrelevant.

They are the establishment. They don’t get to pick sides.

Stu

June 17, 2009 at 1:54 pm

I do think there is a distinction between Nightjack and the Iraq inquiry, and that we have got them the wrong way round.

It boils down to a form of bullying. The Iraq enquiry is, in part, about what public figures did in public. They are well-known enough, experienced enough, and sufficiently well resourced (from public funds) to look after themselves. Accordingly, at least that part of the inquiry should be in public.

Nightjack is just one copper, on his own. He is pointing out what is actually being done by The Establishment. In a straight fight, he is not going to win; already he has had a written warning and it is obvious that his career progression is over (at best).

His only defence against being bullied into submission was his anonymity.

patently

June 17, 2009 at 3:12 pm

I think all you have to do to see it was the right legal decision is to try it the other way round: should a newspaper (or anyone) owe a duty to keep someone’s identity secret if they have chosen to hide it for the purposes of publishing information on the internet?

I feel for Night Jack, but I can’t see that the answer to that should have been ‘yes’.

That doesn’t mean that The Times have acted honourably, but then, when did we ever expect our papers to do that?

Julia Smith

June 17, 2009 at 3:29 pm

But NightJack wasn’t outed by the Government or by public figures, though. He was outed by The Times, and like it or not they’re a free agent with the right to write about whatever they like as long as it is not defamatory or incorrect.

You don’t have a ‘right’ to anonymity. You have the ability to remain anonymous for as long as nobody is willing to put in sufficient research to identify you.

There’s certainly a parallel with the Iraq enquiry and I absolutely agree with you that it seems disingenuous that this group of public figures can give their opinion entirely off the record whilst this public figure* must be place entirely on record. You’re also right that it’s entirely the wrong way round anyway – that if there were any decency in the world, NightJack would remain anonymous and the Iraq enquiry would have complete public scrutiny (barring details of ongoing operations).

But just because we might want that to be the case doesn’t mean it has to be.

Julia, absolutely! Well said.

*I’d be interested to know the legality of it all, but I’d say it’s plausible that NightJack, the pseudonymous writer, could be considered a public figure, whilst Richard Horton, the man behind the pseudonym, is a private individual.

Stu

June 17, 2009 at 3:35 pm

I am quite firmly of the view that anonymity is a right. A world in which “Dr John Crippen”, “The Heresiarch”, etc were to afraid to share their experiences & analysis with us would be one that was impoverished, not only for the lack of information, but also for the pall it would cast over the rest of us & our freedom of speech.

We do not know why someone chooses to be anonymous so we should respect their decision. Those who object to statements someone makes can do so on the basis of their merits or lack thereof, rather than trying to beat them into submission with the law & other tools used by bullies. It doesn’t even matter who the person is, their blogging should be addressed on whether their information is right & whether their conclusions are logical & practicable.

This is a sad day. I never even particularly liked the Nightjack blog, but it is a sign of how much some in the media & that hate us.

asquith

June 17, 2009 at 4:10 pm

Also, there is always a reason when the Murdoch press does anything along these lines, just like Brendan O’Neill & his RCP mates never act without an ulterior motive.

I wonder why the Times chose to do this. It is not comfortable thinking by any means.

asquith

June 17, 2009 at 4:12 pm

I never read NightJack and I’m not as au fait with blogs as you are, so my comments below are based on assumptions – dangerous stuff, I acknowledge.

As NightJack won the Orwellian prize I’m guessing his blog resonated with lots of people. This would have have spurred him on to write more and more on what is necessarily his perspective. How much he left out, whether what he wrote was representative, I’ve no idea.

The police are in a difficult position in that they are state employees, with a duty to protect all, regardless of their, or their employers, policitics. One can take it that his blog was a form of whistle blowing or a menacing attempt to undermine a legitamately elected government. Yes, the last few words were difficult to write but remain true.

If Nightjack’s desire to remain anonymous was absolute he could have written under several guises and managed to put his case across – that is at the heart of blogging, as I understand it.

As you and I know, Stu, it isn’t that difficult to establish yourself under several names yet it remains relatively easy to find someone if you want to. I seriously doubt that The Indie and Times were the only ones interested enough to find out his id.

Blogs and their contributors who may go on to launch their own blogs (if they can get off their backsides long enough, ahem) should still be able to claim their name is their brand though I agree with your in that anyone who wants to start now, with the full intent of dissing who/whatever should have the guts to put their real name to their articles.

Blogging is old enough to have gained cachet for them who blog regularly. A 40-something professional should know exactly what they are getting into and, if he truly didn’t want publicity, should have demanded the withdrawal of his name from the prize.

What do I know though?

ladytizzy

June 17, 2009 at 4:46 pm

Stu,

Your comments are reasonable; we just have a slightly different take on the issue.

I will just correct one point, though; confidential information has long been subject to protection at law, and is (in general) enforceable against newspapers. There is no general rule that one’s identity is excluded from this – quite the opposite, in fact.

patently

June 17, 2009 at 5:00 pm

asquith – I disagree that we have a right to anonymity. It doesn’t even really make sense.

Suppose: if NightJack hadn’t been named by a newspaper, but his identity had come to us from some other source – say, another blog, or one of his colleagues, or a family member. Suppose it had been posted publicly on the internet. Would the family member or colleague who posted it be a criminal? Would they have done something illegal?

Even better, imagine I had discovered your real name, and I referred to you by it on this blog. Would that make me a criminal?

Not really. It would be a betrayal of trust, and it would be dishonest and low, but it wouldn’t be a violation of your rights. I don’t see how this situation is any different – The Times came across the information independently and decided it was within their interests to publish it. Shame on them, indeed, and a sad, sorry state of affairs, but not a violation of rights.

Tizzy – “a form of whistle blowing or a menacing attempt to undermine a legitamately elected government” I wouldn’t really say so. NightJack was just observational. I rarely read his blog (though I looked through a fair amount of old posts following the Orwell Prize win), and he stopped updating it at the beginning of this year. He did level criticism at the Government, but no more than you would expect from a typical newspaper columnist or opposition politician.

You are right that NightJack could have written under many guises – but that would really have been far less effective. Words mean more when they come from a consistent source. It’s hard enough to be noticed in blogging anyway, let alone being noticed multiple times under different identities.

As for putting a real name to articles, is that gutsy or is it stupid? Only time will tell.

patently – interesting, but was his identity ‘confidential’, or just ‘not public knowledge’? Is there a difference?

Stu

June 17, 2009 at 7:33 pm

If information is not public knowledge, then the question is academic, as no-one knows and therefore no-one can disclose it.

If those who know, know (or should know) that they have received the information under conditions of confidence – either expressly, or implied from the circumstances under which they acquired it, then they have a duty to keep the information confidential. There is nothing criminal about disclosure, but there is a common law action that can be brought under the civil law to either restrain publication (if it hasn’t happened yet) or seek damages if it has.

Anyway, enough of this. I’m going to out you. You’re ██████ ██████, and you live in █████. There: how does that feel

patently

June 18, 2009 at 9:25 am

Three instances of the word “know” within 5 words. And it still makes sense!

I’m actually quite pleased with that sentence

patently

June 18, 2009 at 9:27 am

Ha!

Stu

June 18, 2009 at 2:14 pm

Spoilsport!

patently

June 18, 2009 at 4:55 pm

“Freedom isn’t just the freedom to do whatever you want. It’s also the acceptance that others are allowed to do whatever they want.”

But only when that doesn’t take away your own freedom. Freedom is the freedom to do anything that doesn’t destroy freedom. NJ is no longer free to publish.

The Times are probably within the Law here. That is irrelevant. What matters is that they are acting like a bunch of spiteful tw@ts. They know that they can’t beat bloggers on quality, so they’re hitting below the belt instead. My advice is, do not buy the Times ever again (I never have, myself); if they can act this irresponsibly, how can we trust any of their ‘news’ to be accurate?

Sound and Fury

June 18, 2009 at 7:44 pm

I absolutely agree with you about The Times.

I disagree with you about freedom, though. NightJack is still free to blog if he wishes to. He’ll just have to either do it with his name against it, or as a brand new secret pseudonym. He’s not lost the freedom to write at all.

Stu

June 18, 2009 at 8:02 pm

This one is easy.

If you are on the public payroll and you blog ‘anonymously’ but vigorously about things going on at work, sooner or later someone is going to say who you are. (Note: I worked for the FCO for nearly thirty years. Had I started blogging about UK foreign policy as a senior anonymous insider I would have been amazed if someone had not wanted to expose me, for good or less good reasons.)

That’s just the way it works. It may be that the person who ‘outs’ you is being obnoxious. But freedom includes the right to be obnoxious.

Not enough attention has been paid to the point that the prospect of being ‘outed’ eventually is one strong mechanism for giving anonymous bloggers incentives to stay honest and accurate.

On my own site I have written about how it might work if public bodies allowed their staff to blog anonymously. New awkward problems would emerge soon enough:

http://charlescrawford.biz/blog.php?single=1036

Bottom line: if you want to blog anonymously and not get revealed, you have to work very hard at covering your e-tracks. And then, when disaster strikes, take it on the chin.

Charles Crawford

June 26, 2009 at 10:54 am

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Sharpe's Opinion

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The Outing of NightJack

In Defence of The Times

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