Attack of the Blogs

Forbes reported Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective.

There is a solution; it is called a lawsuit.

Their potent allies in this pursuit include Google and Yahoo. Blogs started a few years ago as a simple way for people to keep online diaries. Suddenly they are the ultimate vehicle for brand-bashing, personal attacks, political extremism and smear campaigns.

Which have been going on for years, in the form of boycotts, websites, etc. Now that blogs are here, they can be used as well.

It's not easy to fight back: Often a bashing victim can't even figure out who his attacker is. No target is too mighty, or too obscure, for this new and virulent strain of oratory. Microsoft has been hammered by bloggers; so have CBS, CNN and ABC News,

Microsoft and the MSM have been criticized for many years, as have manufacturers and congressmen.

two research boutiques that criticized IBM's Notes software, the maker of Kryptonite bike locks, a Virginia congressman outed as a homosexual and dozens of other victims--even a right-wing blogger who dared defend a blog-mob scapegoat.

"Bloggers are more of a threat than people realize, and they are only going to get more toxic. This is the new reality," says Peter Blackshaw, chief marketing officer at Intelliseek, a Cincinnati firm that sifts through millions of blogs to provide watch-your-back service to 75 clients, including Procter & Gamble and Ford.

At least that is what someone who is in the business of warning big corporations about things being said about their products would want his customers to think.

"The potential for brand damage is really high,"says Frank Shaw, executive vice president at Microsoft's main public relations firm, Waggener Edstrom. "There is bad information out there in the blog space, and you have only hours to get ahead of it and cut it off, especially if it's juicy."

Mark Evans blogged I was blown away from the bias and lack of objectivity in the "story". As a working journalist, it was obvious the writer, Daniel Lyons, had a mandate or was given one by someone upstairs to rip into blogs.... Lyons starts the story with an anecdote about a dodgy business man who once had his photo taken with Steve Forbes. Isn't that a sweet coincidence? I find it hard to believe a first-class publication like Forbes would actually print a 3,298-word one-sided diatribe. While this comment may come across as sour grapes from an enthusiastic blogger who believes he's providing an insight "service, the Forbes story is disappointing because it is, in fact, not a news story but an invective essay by someone who has a serious problem with blogs. Lyons makes a good point there are nasty, vindictive, irresponsible bloggers that do far more harm than good but he fails to recognize there are lots of people providing insight commentary and putting the spotlight on events that mainstream media sometimes misses.

TomRaftery blogged The article almost comes across as a spoof - indeed if it were not in Forbes magazine, I would have assumed it was a spoof, so outlandish are some of the claims in it... The article’s main thesis seems to hang off the case of one Gregory Halpern who was hounded by a blogger called Timothy Miles. Mr Miles wrote some allegedly defamatory posts about Mr Halpern under a pseudonym and has now fled legal proceedings against him to Slovenia. The salient point here is that the blog was seen as libellous and was taken down and the author had legal proceedings taken against him (from which he fled!).

Dan Gillmor blogged Overall, what a pile of trash from Forbes Magazine, which uses its cover to go on the attack against bloggers in the new issue. You have to register to read the stories. Go ahead if you must; it's worth reading to see how a normally solid business magazine can go astray with an alarmist and at times absurd broadside. Do bloggers sometimes go too far? Of course. But if the best-read bloggers typically did work of the lousy quality shown in the Forbes stories, they'd be pilloried -- appropriately so.

Weblogs Work blogged It’s almost like a piece of performance art—a paranoid story about uneven, one-sided rants from powerful publishing entities contained in an uneven, one-sided rant from a paranoid but powerful publishing entity. So meta it hurts.

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