Regional publisher Northcliffe Media has dropped its bid to unmask an anonymous tweeter who was parodying the company’s chief executive Steve Auckland.
The company had asked Twitter to reveal the identity of the “obsessive” blogger behind the @UnSteveDorkland account.
It initially claimed that ‘Dorkland’ had put staff in fear for their safety with a series of Tweets over a four-week period this summer which the company believed amounted to cyber-bullying.
However it withdrew the action last night in a bid to avoid what seemed certain to become a lengthy US court battle.
Twitter, which is based in California, had initially told the blogger it would be revealing his identity to Northcliffe this week.
However US lawyer Frank Sommers then offered his services free of charge to fight the action on the blogger’s behalf, opening up the prospect of protracted litigation.
Although ‘Dorkland’ has been portrayed by some bloggers and trade media outlets as a protagonist for ‘freedom of speech,’ HTFP understands that some of the Tweets at issue in the case were homophobic in nature.
Others sought to imply, wrongly as it turned out, that certain named members of staff were on the verge of being made redundant.
A spokesperson for Northcliffe Media said: “Since the beginning of this case, Northcliffe Media has been clear that its approach to Twitter was not about freedom of speech, but about a barrage of anonymous tweets that amounted to cyber-bullying and harassment.
“We believed 700 tweets in four weeks indicated a disturbing obsession on the part of the anonymous writer.
“Further engagement through the courts would require direct involvement of the very staff we are anxious to protect, so the legal process has been halted.
“Free speech is the lifeblood of our newspapers and websites. Here, in weighing the rights of an anonymous writer against the rights of staff singled out by name, we believed it was reasonable to ask Twitter to supply the identity of the person making these comments.
“His or her intention may initially have been humorous, but these tweets went far beyond commentary and satire, causing pain and offence.
“We encourage humour in our business, but no workplace should be expected to tolerate an unrelenting flow of derogatory and degrading comments of questionable legality.”
“This case raises serious questions about how to deal with people using social media to defame and harass whilst hiding behind a cloak of anonymity.
“At Northcliffe we will get on with adapting our titles to the local, multi-channel approach that will secure the future. In the meantime we hope the anonymous writer gives more thought to the line that divides the humorous from the offensive.”
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Wonderful article, a paragon of impartial and accurate journalism
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It would seem to me that if the comments by “Dorkland” were truly defamatory and harassing as “quoted” here in the story, I would suspect that Northcliffe would have pursued their legal action. And what exactly is “questionable legality”. My interpretation is that it is something that is questionable but legal as opposed to something that is “perhaps” illegal.
Maybe “Dorkland” should sue Northcliffe for harassment!
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I follow Dorkland on Twitter, I have certainly never seen any homophobic tweets from him, also weren’t Northcliffe initially complaining that Dorkland must have hacked their email system to get access to some of his information, where did that claim disappear from in todays statement? Maybe the tweets about impending redundancies which they are now disputing were true.
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No one believes that this case has been dropped for any other reasons than the huge backlash of internet publicity it has engendered and also that Dorkland got legal counsel. The rest is bluster.
As to Mark’s comment. As an ex-Northcliffe exec myself I can tell you that redundancies are always impending.
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Reading between the lines, Northcliffe finally listened to their lawyers whose advice was presumably something on the lines of ‘When in a hole stop digging.”
More worryingly, the whole affair shows that senior execs do not understand Twitter and social media or the risks to corporate reputation if you try to gag criticism and comment. How is this futile exercise in legal posturing being funded? More job cuts?
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The Northcliffe bigwigs might also have got round to reading Wednesday’s Daily Mail article about ‘draconian censorship of free speech’ and headed Twitter tyranny.
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Sometimes the real twitter tyranny is the power of the twitter mob. They often pile in on someone’s behalf without actually reading half the stuff they are supposed to be backing.
A lot of people on Twitter supported @unstevedorkland purely to bash the Daily Mail (even though the action was brought by Northcliffe Media) without looking at the facts of the case.
Going legal was a bit heavy handed on Northcliffe’s part though, surely there was a half-way house to solving the problem.
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Haven’t noticed his Tweets being homophobic – but he is dreadfully accentist. Perhaps those of us who speak wi’ northern accents should sue?
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I agree with Dave. Some of the Tweets in question were well beyond the bounds of what any trained local newspaper journalist would consider legality while others were just spectacularly juvenile and/or nasty. Northcliffe is absolutely right to say that the case raises serious questions about how to deal with people using social media to defame and harass whilst hiding behind a cloak of anonymity. The real story here is that Twitter and other social media sites are being allowed to pubilsh material that, for very good reasons, would never have seen the light of day in a print publication.
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Dave
“A lot of people on Twitter supported @unstevedorkland purely to bash the Daily Mail (even though the action was brought by Northcliffe Media) without looking at the facts of the case”
That is extremely naive or disingenuous. Northcliffe Media is part of A&N Media as is Associated Newspapers, publishers of the Daily Mail. The senior management team at Northcliffe will obey the company line which will be approved at the highest level (as you would expect to be fair). The most senior executives with overall control of both Northcliffe and Associated are the same people.
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Orpheus
“The real story here is that Twitter and other social media sites are being allowed to pubilsh material that, for very good reasons, would never have seen the light of day in a print publication.”
Is that not the point? Until recently “News” was the sole province of media organisations who are, in the main, biased to some degree or another. We were fed what was deemed to be suitable for us. It is the same sort of elitist thinking that wants journalists to be licensed and for publications not accredited by the great and the good to be banned from accepting advertising. Twitter and other social media allows the people to speak. Not something wholly welcomed I know.
But Twitter is also the equivalent of a large pub or playground. Things get said that shouldn’t sometimes but most people are man/woman enough to take it. If tweets are really threatening or defamatory they should be dealt with but, unless they are really serious, there is a mechanism. Twitter will close accounts or, how about this, just block. Turn the radio off.
What not to do? Do not start an un-winnable battle which means that the tweeter increases his followers from 130 to nearly 3,000. Do not look like you cannot take a joke. Do not look like you are a media giant who says one thing in its major publication but does completely the opposite.
What to do? Ignore it. It will go away.
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Why bother with twitter anyway – it’s just a way for corporates to gain personal details and us em for commercial gain – now that’s a story.
Who is looking at them eh?????????
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But Phil, Twitter is a publication tool and a media giant in its own right, one with which celebrities, etc can reach huge swathes of people. It’s not the equivalent of a large pub or playground, it can be amongst certain users, but there are also those who can reach millions of people, far beyond the reach of, say a local newspaper website.
Is it fair for example when twitter users reveal the names behind people who are in injunctions when the traditional media are banned from reporting them? If people are prepared to publish, shouldn’t they also accept responsibility?
Also, you say that @unstevedorklands twitter count increased but even with a relatively small amount of followers that depends on who those followers are, all it would take is a few re-tweets and the growth of the message increases exponentially and if the initial small number of followers are influential within the industry I can see why Northcliffe were so hacked off.
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Albeit an extreme example, when Twitter users such as Rileyy_69 can get arrested for abusing Tom Daley, where do you draw the line on what is abuse? Gentle mickey-taking? Near-the-knuckle ribbing? Public humiliation? Threatening or abusive behaviour? I realise that unSteveDorkland never reach the latter, but it’s still a grey area.
All that aside, I really don’t care about whether Steve Auckland has been ‘offended’, or the argument over ‘attempting to stifle free speech’, or whether whoever is behind it should be ‘unmasked’. The main question for me is why on earth would anybody be pathetic enough to do this in the first place?
Fair enough writing a one-off blog about the ins and outs of Northcliffe if you need to get something off your chest if you’ve been made redundant or pushed out, but who in their right mind can actually be bothered to return to Twitter, sometimes up to 10 times a day, and do this? At the very least it’s pathetic and and the very worst it’s almost psychopathic.
Yes, it’s made us all examine what’s morally right and wrong within the Twittersphere and perhaps raised some important issues for all forms of publishing, but the bottom indefensible line is that the initial action in creating this account is quite tragic.
I’m not by any means defending Northcliffe’s attempts to unmask this Tweeter, but if any right-minded person asked themselves ‘could I be bothered do set up something like this in the first place?’ I think the answer would be no.
I presume Northcliffe just imagine it will slowly die a death so have, in my opinion, rightly dropped an expensive legal battle. But, if the account is still active in a few months’ time, then whoever it is clearly needs help in adjusting to life after newspapers. If you have nothing better to do with your spare time, then I genuinely feel sorry for you.
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