The Fairfax papers are running a curious 3-page story today saying Justice Michael Kirby ‘has been vilified and defamed by fraudsters who have stolen his identity to post offensive material on the popular internet site MySpace,” and implying it is a first case scenario. Good grief, what a beat up!
Is this just lazy or out-of-touch MSM journalism? A very quick perusal of My Space gives you hosts of fake identity pages, and sometimes more than one for people with high profiles. There are numerous bogus identity pages for many of Australia’s political players, and if you care to look further afield, identities such as the Pope, the Queen, and Rupert Murdock himself. Most of them are crude and lame attempts at satire. The jabs on the fake Kirby page are not much different to ones on the fakes for Amanda Vanstone, or Alexander Downer, for example. It sounds as if MySpace will take the Kirby page down if approached. The comparison to real cases of stolen identity at the end of the article is nonsense.
If it’s not laziness, why highlight Kirby? Is it another instance of smearing Kirby (while appearing to do otherwise)?
The article also says ‘The case… underlines the flimsy or fraudulent nature of much of the internet’s so-called “citizen journalism”.’ The MySpace pages are attempted spoofs within a social networking site rather than citizen journalism. While there is plenty of lively discussion about issues surrounding citizen journalism, this appears to be an uninformed and broadsweeping (or flimsy and fraudulent?) smear on new media.
My feeling is that the only thing to be trusted here is that Michael Kirby will deal with the issue with his usual dignity, intelligence, and allegiance to free speech.
