It's bad enough that some supermarket tabloids trade on fabricated stories to sell copies in order to feed the public's appetite for useless details about whomever and whatever. Now, there's a blog that deals in gossip and satire, and proud of it. And it's getting the owner of the blog in deep trouble.
Nik Richie is the man in charge of TheDirty.com, which made headlines after it became public knowledge that the blog accepted an anonymous posting that has destroyed the character of a high school English teacher who moonlights as a Cincinnati Bengals cheerleader.
Sarah Jones has said that because of the lies spread via TheDirty, some of her students have refused to take her class, believing the unsubstantiated garbage to be fact. Sarah happens to be happily married, but according to TheDirty, she's supposedly been with several Bengals players and has contracted sexually transmitted diseases, among other things. In an effort to set the record straight, Mrs. Jones was given an opportunity to confront Richie on national television. The meeting airs tomorrow on Anderson Cooper's syndicated talk show. According to a Yahoo! article, Richie compares himself to a librarian, and claims to have no control over the posts. Having checked out the site myself, I see a disclaimer that says Richie is not responsible for the content. Au contraire!
What Richie is doing is inviting trouble of the worst kind. For one thing, he made the wrong comparison. Instead of likening himself to a librarian, and defaming librarians all over the world in the process, he should've compared himself to radio shock jocks like Howard Stern, Opie & Anthony, et al, who encourage the nothing-happening, small-minded Tom, Dick, & Harry Jabronies of the world to go ahead and invent stories on the air with no regard to consequences or repercussions.
The way I look at it is this. If you don't have proof to back up your claims, then back off. In case you haven't noticed, not all tabloids see the same story the same way. If they've all got the same cover subject, say for example, last week's celebrity flavor, Kim Kardashian, they'll have a different spin on the same story, creating further tension where it isn't needed. What Nik Richie has to concern himself with is the prospect of a defamation of character lawsuit lodged against him because he's serving as an enabler to a bunch of goofs with little or no regard for common courtesy. A woman's careers are being unfairly decimated, and why is that? We don't know the root cause, and maybe never will, unless Anderson gets to the bottom of the matter, or someone else does later, but what we do know is that for being an enabler and a Pied Piper to a legion of would-be tabloid writers, Nik Richie gets a pair of weasel ears. If he can actually find it within himself to hand up the jabroni(es) responsible for the defamation of Sarah Jones, we'll find a way to send them weasel ears, too.
Updated, 11/10/11, 9:32 am (ET): TheDirty.com first posted their false reports about Sarah Jones in October 2009, taking a picture of Jones and Bengals placekicker Shayne Graham that was from a charity event out of context. The accusations of STD's came a couple of months later. I've since discovered that Nik Richie was, in fact, hit with a libel suit last year, and, per a Kentucky judge's ruling, Richie was supposed to pay Mrs. Jones $11 million dollars in damages. Apparently, he hasn't ponied up, which may be why they've gone to Anderson Cooper, rather than one of the courtroom shows, to resolve this problem......
2 comments:
This guy obviously has dreams of being the next Perez Hilton, but all he is, is a PR nightmare.
I can't believe he thinks he can act with such impugnity. It's called, "slander" and "libel" and Jones can sue his butt off if he has no proof of what he published about her.
I know the internet makes it much easier to anonymously harass someone with "I hate Whomever.com" type of pages and comments made on facebook and twitter. However, being in the news biz myself, these anonymous sources shouldn't be taken as gospel, there should be definitive proof before reporting with certain stories. Otherwise, it would have to be a blind item, something even tabloids do in certain situations.
I'm always suspicious of any story which includes the line, "sources say", because you don't know who that source is or their motivations. People can say what they want and the drive by media can damage someone's reputation at its leisure.
It wasn't that long ago when a story couldn't be run without confirmation from THREE sources. Now the media just runs on random leaks and checkbook journalism.
Preach on, magicdog.
With all the complaints about cyberbullying, you'd think someone wouldn't stoop so low, but it's clear that Nik Richie's blog is aimed at a specific demographic, that of the permanently-adolescent, small-minded, let's-get-drunk-24/7 Jerry Springer/Howard Stern fanbase that lives for this sort of thing.
Funny you should talk about anonymous sources. The popular phrase these days is "a person familiar with the ______(negotiations/situation), speaking on condition of anonymity". Even on a heavy news day, there's at least one or two of those per day, because of the media obsession with feeding the "public curiosity" beast.
If I were Sarah Jones' husband, I'd be calling a lawyer now to start the litigation process to sue Richie for defamation, regardless of what happens on TV today.
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