You should see the journos own blog:

annamikhailova.blogspot.com

Hypocrite me thinks! Maybe a post to the register?

So, if someone would plaster your kids pictures, your address, the school you take your kids, your mother’s address, and all the details they can find about you, on the net, spinning some basically true, but twisted text around it, you would take it without a word.

I dunno. I think Ms Mihailkova would be really upset if some trashletter would appear in her box, people would stalk around her place, taking photos of her, printing her picture with her address, and so on.

The Girl was actually writing about what are actually rarely explored, serious issues for women, and for men too. The way she had found depended on walking a careful line between reality and anonymity, for herself and for others. Her identity being known would mean that others would be identifiable. She did it very carefully, very ethically. Openly discussing the ethics.

The book deal was anonymous. No doubt there would have been a larger payment otherwise, with the additional publicity opportunities. Then another part of the same media empire “unmasks” her. So they get the publicity regardless, and destroy her life, her career.

Looking at the work the reporter had published in the few previous weeks since she started at The Sunday Times, they were all conspiracy type stories. GM drugs. satellite surveillance of sex offenders, ID cards. I can only imagine, as the extraordinarily dated, disapproving language she used in the “unmasking”, and the extreme measures she used in pressuring The Girl would seem to indicate, that she felt The Girl to be a sexual deviant who had to be unmasked, terrified and stopped from writing, all for the public good. Then she, and those above her at The Sunday Times acted as detectives, prosecutors, judge and court officers to execute it.

That is a gross misuse of press freedom, perhaps not unconnected with people at another Murdoch paper, edited only yards away, and no doubt using the same support services, now being in the hands of the police for tapping phones. Again for no good reason. This is the media one again deliberately confusing what they see as the public being interested enough to buy a few more copies of their rag with investigations being in the “public interest”, and to hell with our freedoms or our values.

And, yes you guessed, I’ve expanded my thoughts on my blog.

I do find it interesting that anyone actually still has notions of anonymity in todays big wired world. If one really wants anonymity then a good place to start is by pulling out the modem cable and opt out of the brave new world of the internet.

However I don’t agree that the Girl, or anybody else, should get anonymity just by asking for it. That way lies just as much disaster.

I’ve expanded the arguments further on my blog.