Comments on: Mob Rule

By: Tendai

Tendai — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 20:36:35 +0000

I’m with Rachel here. Also, I’ve always doubted the idea that you have to have watched or read, or be *fully* conversant with something to criticise it. A fact of life in “information-rich” communities, is that we *do* rely on authorities as the epistemic basis for our original positions. These authorities may be as unspecialised as ‘following the herd’ (as often happens on the stock market, for example), to those as specialised as scientific consensus. With how much information we are bombarded with on a daily basis, it is simply unfeasible for people to do a full critique of everything they might ever complain about, before committing to a position. By that argument, most people who campaign about climate change ought to be stuck in school for several years before ever getting a placard out. Now I’m not suggesting we make uninformed complaints. Instead, I think you can have a minimal, but accurate, impression of an issue, and then complain or criticise on that basis.
In any case, that’s irrelevant in the Gately issue. A distinction can be made between issues that require factual knowledge to make a useful complaint or criticism, and issues that appeal to personal sensibilities, for which factual knowledge is often unneeded (and unlikely to be sought!). You would need very minimal information to decide that you found comments like that, offensive. Yet I think one of the goods of public debate is that when an issue raises wide and spontaneous criticism, public debate may draw out inaccuracies, allowing people to realign their initial knee-jerk position on those hot issues, as they acquire more information.

By: Salman Shaheen

Salman Shaheen — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:16:11 +0000

I think, in this case, the two complimented each other quite well. I think there is a case to be made for making press complaints. Broadcast news in this country would never be able to get away with the kind of crap and outright lies peddled by the right-wing tabloids, so they have to be held accountable. This is a separate issue to the struggle for gay rights, but the two overlap, and I think your characterisation of people snivelling to a bunch of bureaucrats is wholly unfair in this instance. Moreover, using the word pwned whilst trying to formulate an otherwise erudite argument means you lose several hit points.

By: Reuben

Reuben — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:58:07 +0000

To be honest I think that the mass complaints were a most dissapointing culmination to what was otherwise a genuine excersize in popular power. The battle had already been won in the virtual streets and moir had been comprehensively pwned in the court of publc opinion – which after all is what fundamentally matters, given the current juncture at which the struggle for gay lib is situated. Why people then felt the need to go snivelling to a bunch of bureaucrats, asking them to step in on their behalf, and to validate their right to be offended, I do not know. Campaigning>complaining.

By: Salman Shaheen

Salman Shaheen — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:44:39 +0000

With regards to Sachsgate, there was definitely a kind of herd mentality. Hardly anyone really cared at the time, but as soon as the press created a bandwagon people jumped on it and became retrospectively offended. The whole thing was ridiculous. With the case of Moir, I don’t think it amounts to mob rule, but Liz does make a key point in that what Moir wrote was actually fairly tame compared to the paper’s daiy content. That’s not to say that people jumped on a bandwagon. I think a lot of people were genuinely offended when they saw such an obviously innocent and well-liked victim becoming the target of an incensitive posthumous homophobic attack. What people need to do, however, is extend their sympathy to the other powerless targets of the Mail’s campaigns.

By: Owen

Owen — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:07:49 +0000

I think Rachel’s right that a large number of people complaining about the same thing doesn’t necessarily amount to mob rule. If the PCC complaints about Moir’s article were mostly written by people who read the article (as Rachel’s evidence implies but doesn’t prove), then to me it doesn’t seem very fair to describe it as mob rule. That’s not to say there weren’t some unpleasant elements to the campaign – I read rumours that someone had posted Moir’s home address online, for instance, though I’ve no idea if the rumours were true – but I don’t think that close an analogy can be drawn between this case and the campaigns whipped up by the Mail and Christian Voice.

By: Liz Stephens

Liz Stephens — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:58:24 +0000

I don’t normally comment on my own articles and this is not going to set a precedent … but here goes… in response to Rachel:
1. I didn’t say no-one read it. But I’m pretty sure there’s a proportion who didn’t. A 21 per cent increase in readership of the article doesn’t knock that out – how do we know that those 21 per cent who read the article were the same people that went on to complain?
2. Yes I have submitted a PCC complaint. You could easily copy and paste something from a blog or twitter feed and not the original article.
3. I appreciate it’s not the same as Sachsgate and thus I didn’t compare the two. What I am saying is that Twitter is setting a precedent for Liberal mass-complaint – by the same Liberals (I include myself in that demographic) who complain about mob rule by Daily Mail readers.
4. I’d be interested to know what you consider the difference to be between ‘orchestrated’ and ‘viral’. Is ‘viral’ less dangerous because it’s more detached from the people from whom it originates?
Sorry for the formal and facetious ‘bullet’ point style response. It’s a nasty habit…

By: Rachel

Rachel — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:43:08 +0000

apols for typos, written in haste, at work

By: Rachel

Rachel — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:42:18 +0000

Web Traffic went up 21% to the article in question so that knocks out the ‘didn’t read it’ fallacy.

Unlike the opera/Ross/brand which you had to listen to/see at a theatre, that article was online for all to see.

Have you tried making a PCC complaint? You have to fill in quite a complex form and say what it is and why you are complaining, giving details and explanations.

The PCC said that they found most of the letters to be individually written, not templates.

This was not the same as the Mail’s orchestrated SDachsgate campaign, where fewer than 10 listeners complained and then 38,000 did after the fact, whipped up by the Mail. the pseed and fury, the breadth of the demographic and the use of social media sites liek facebook and twitter – which many peopel are on all the time during the working day – meant that this was viral, not orchestrated, and driven purely by reaction to a piece that the audience had read, and couldn’t believe they were reading.