When Is It Permissible To Publish A Private Person's Email? What's the Most Efficient Way to Fight Smears?

Tim Russo (Blogger Interrupted) and I disagree on whether a private individual's email should be posted, without the individual's consent, on a blog. 

Russo twice interviewed a woman who previously appeared in a brief television film clip about Ohioans' views on Obama, and subsequently published her email.  I expressed reservations, which prompted a subsequent post from Russo, in which he wrote: 

Such hatemongers, like Joy, thrive in an environment where they get to spread their lies without fear of being exposed as liars.  That’s why she talked to Channel 19.  She, like most Americans, is used to media being a one way conversation, in which you can spout your crap with complete certainty that it won’t come back at you... .

Not anymore.

And then Russo repeats the woman's email address and encourages his readers to "write to Joy and continue to correct her lies".  He further plans to publish all recipients of the chain emails.  And thus I have two problems with his position on publishing email addresses.

To recap:

1. Russo's publishing a woman's email, which she gave him in the course of an interview, and encouraging his readers to write her.  My problem with that?  She didn't email him, but repeated her thoughts on a video interview that he sought out.
2. Russo, and his colleague Eric Vessels of Plunderbund, are publishing not only the senders of smear emails, but the recipients, too. My problem with that?  Russo and Vessels are painting all the recipients as equally complicit in spreading the smears.  If I had a dollar for all the loony emails I've received (on autism, on political issues far and wide, on dodgy urban myths) -- well, I'd be rich.  But I can't think of one I've agreed with.

What do you think?  When is it ethically correct to broadcast a person's private information?  Is it different when someone is circulating untruths and lies? 

The whole story came about as a way of fighting smears.  So my question is, what's the best way to fight smears? 

Below the fold, the back story.

The back story:

On June 6, 2008, Joy Atwood of Medina, Ohio, said of Barack Obama, "He's not American or for America.  He won't even put his hand on his heart for the pledge of Allegiance, so I don't see him as leading America.  I see him as an Arab." 

I am sure there a lot of people who believe similar lies, innuendo, and smears  about Sen. Obama.  What made this blog-worthy is that Atwood was recorded as saying that in a segment that was aired  on a CBS affiliate, WOIO Channel 19 , while being interviewed by reporter Myrt Price.  The newscast did not identify her by name, or correct her or rebut her allegations in any way.

The lack of correction rightfully outraged Ohio blogger Tim Russo (Blogger Interrupted), so the next Saturday, he went to the Medina Farmer's Market, found the woman who appeared in the WOIO clip, and interviewed her on video.  In the course of the interview (VIDEO: Medina “I see him as an arab” woman gets corrected), Russo asks for and receives Atwood's email, so that he can send her accurate information about Obama's background and positions.

The following Saturday Russo returned to the Medina Farmer's Market for a second video interview with Atwood, to see if Atwood's attitudes have changed, in VIDEO: New email smear about Barack killing babies, and Joy still thinks Barack is Arab.  During the interview, Atwood reveals she hadn't looked at any of Russo's rebuttal links, and goes on to say of Obama: "He wants to make sure [neonates that survive abortions] that they are eliminated and killed also", which she heard from a Concerned Women in America lobbyist. (A commenter at Dispatches from the Culture Wars wrote, The woman appears to be referring to Obama's apparent vote against the 2002 Born Alive Infants Protection Act, which provides, I think, that babies born alive after a failed abortion have the same legal status as other people and so would receive basic medical care.)

I want to be clear here.  I reject Atwood's stated positions.  Nothing she says about Sen. Obama is true, and she should be challenged on her mistaken ideas.  But how?

In the post accompanying the video, Russo invites his readers to email Atwood, and to visit her stand at the Medina Farmer's Market.  I left a comment on Russo's blog, indicating my discomfort with revealing Atwood's email.  In Joy Atwood Video Now Over 11,000 Views, Russo quoted my comment and repeated his position that smear-spreaders should be publicly rebuked.

Personally, I prefer Plunderbund's New Rules:--at least the first two [brackets and italics indicate editorial changes]

If you get any of these emails, you need to do 3 things (please):

1. Reply to everyone who got the email that you can tell (you may need to copy addresses from a quoted email that was forwarded) and tell them the truth.

2. Forward it to [watchdog at barackobama dot com -- link works, linktext changed]

It's the third one I'm not so sure about.

3. Forward it to me [eric at plunderbund dot com -- link works, linktext changed] and I’ll blog it (include the entire message including original sender/recipients)

Here's Russo's elaboration:

Memo to email smearers.  Your email address will now be public property.  That’s how we play.  No quarter.  If you spread these lies, you will get corrected, publicly, and more importantly, in your own inbox, where you seem to want to fight this battle.

Again, I'm uncomfortable with this--and as I write, I'm getting clearer.  The previous recipients may deeply disagree with the contents of the email -- I know I get a fair number of whacko emails about this, that and the other.  But I do agree with Russo's follow-on:

Russo's elaboration, con't: And here’s the email I sent to that list.

SUBJECT - You have been sent a lie about Barack Obama

Ladies and gentlemen on the address line,

You have been sent a lie about Barack Obama by [name of sender].  For the truth about Barack Obama, go to www.fightthesmears.com.

Thank you

Here is my strong suggestion:

If you do receive smears and lies about any candidate, I suggest you look at Politifact, and use their research to respond with an email to the sender and recipient list, as Russo outlined.

About Politifact:

the mission of PolitiFact. The St. Petersburg Times of Florida and Congressional Quarterly of Washington, D.C. – two of America’s most trusted, independent newsrooms – have created the site to help voters separate fact from falsehood in the 2008 presidential campaign.

Journalists and researchers from the Times and CQ will fact-check the accuracy of speeches, TV ads, interviews and other campaign communications. We’ll publish new findings every day on PolitiFact.com, and list our sources for all to see.

PolitiFact (pronounced puh-lit’-eh-fact) is bolder than previous journalistic fact-checking efforts because we’ll make a call, declaring whether a claim is True, Mostly True, Half True, Barely True or False. We even have a special category for the most ridiculous claims that we call “Pants on Fire.”

• Politifact's Obama File
• Politifact's Chain Email File -- evaluates and grades assertions found in widely-circulated emails.
• Politifact: Obama Didn't Write That
• Politifact: Obama Does Not Have Muslim Sympathies
• Politifact: In Fact, Obama Does Put His Hand His Heart During the Pledge of Allegiance
• Politifact: Michelle Obama's Senior Thesis Didn't Say That (about white racism)
• PolitiMichelle Obama's Senior Thesis Didn't Say That (about putting the black community first)
• Politifact: Email alleging a Cuban Leader Endorses Obama is a lie
• Politifact: Chain Email Lies about Obama's Full Name
• Politifact: Chain Email Alleging Obama's Kenyan Political Donations is a Lie
• Politifact: Sen. Obama Sworn In to Senate on His Bible
• Politifact: It's A Lie--Obama's Alleged Wahabi Education

You may also wish to inspect the Obama Campaign's Fight the Smears

Blogger Interrupted on Joy Atwood and Smears Against Obama:

• Sunday, June 8, 2008: White Woman in Medina, Ohio on Obama: "I See Him as an Arab
• Sunday, June 8, 2008: No apology on WOIO 19 News 11pm broadcast
• Sunday, June 8, 2008: WOIO Channel 19’s Danielle Serino response to “I see him as an Arab” video
• Saturday, June 14, 2008: VIDEO: Medina “I see him as an arab” woman gets corrected.
• Friday, June 20, 2008:Memo to email smearers - Your email address will appear on my blog and others
• Saturday, June 21, 2008: VIDEO: New email smear about Barack killing babies, and Joy still thinks Barack is Arab.
• Sunday, June 29, 2008: Joy Atwood Video Now Over 11,000 Views

Other Bloggers on the Atwood videos:

• Dispatches from the Culture Wars (which is where I first saw the second video)
• Have Coffee, Will Write
• ChaosGone-Politics
• Pandagon (with more on the origins of the  "baby-killing" smear), cross-posted at Pam's House Blend
• Alternet: Origins of "baby-killing" smear against Obama
• Archy: Fear of Facts
• Emancipate Yourself From Mental Slavery
• Buckeye State Blog
• Ravenhurst
• BlueOhioan
• Ohio Daily Blog
• Merlechaotix
• zztopdog
• foundbypat

Comments

[Matthew K. Tabor]

The popular article re: failed abortions is called "The Audacity of Death" and was featured in The American Spectator. It can also be viewed on the Wall Street Journal Online:

The Audacity of Death.

[tim russo]

thanks for the reasoned critique. very well written.

i completely disagree with your concern for publishing Joy Atwood's email address. i almost put it into the video itself. but i think i've made that point.

i do agree, however, that it is problematic to publish recipients' email addresses. eric and i actually discussed this. however, i will continue to do so, and i think so will eric, for this reason.

the only way such email smearing can be stopped is if it becomes unacceptable, both on the part of the sender, and the recipient. if a potential recipient of such smears worries that their email address may appear on a blog at some point, then this practice will stop in its tracks.

the key element of the current smear campaign against Barack is its secrecy. the blogosphere is designed to remove secrecy. by printing email addresses, of both the sender and the recipient, an incentive is created for both parties to prevent the practice, where currently there is none.

[Lisa]

Publishing the emails of those who happen to just be at the receiving end of an email forward is going to further the divide and is not going to convince anyone that they are wrong about Obama. It's not the way to win people over, it's the way to totally turn people off so that they tell their friends and anyone that will listen to them how they were mistreated.

[Liz Ditz]

More on the "killing babies" smear: Alternet on Obama's Choice Record

[Muslims Against Sharia]

Senator Obama is NOT a Dirty Muslim!

"What you won't hear from this campaign or this party is the kind of politics that uses religion as a wedge," says Mr. Obama, while denouncing statements of him being a Muslim as a smear. Why is the presidential candidate who claims to be religiously inclusive is treating the word "Muslim" as an insult? Apparently, it is OK for Mr. Obama to be associated with terrorists like William Ayers or racists like Jeremiah Wright, but God forbid somebody would call him a Muslim! No, he won't stand for that kind of smear! We admit that most terrorists are Muslims, but most Muslims are not terrorists and the statement on Mr. Obama's website is insulting to hundreds of millions of people.

How could a man who discards his family heritage in favor of political expediency be even considered for presidency of the United States? Where are all the so-called "Islamic civil rights groups" like CAIR, MPAC, ISNA, MAS, etc. who are quick to defend every Islamic terrorist, but are silent when Muslims in general are being denigrated? Would Mr. Obama have the same reaction if someone claimed that he was raised as a Jew? We sincerely doubt that.

"In the wake of 9/11, my meetings with Arab and Pakistani Americans, for example, have a more urgent quality, for the stories of detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors have shaken their sense of security and belonging. They have been reminded that the history of immigration in this country has a dark underbelly; they need specific reassurances that their citizenship really means something, that America has learned the right lessons from the Japanese internments during World War II, and that I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction." Barack Obama, "The Audacity of Hope", page 261.

Well, the political winds did shift in an ugly direction. Is equating "Muslim" with "smear" Obama's idea of "stand[ing] with [Muslims]?

Muslims Against Sharia demand immediate removal of "SMEAR: Barack Obama is a Muslim" statement from the official Barack Obama's website as well as an apology for giving the word "Muslim" a negative connotation.

http://muslimsagainstsharia.blogspot.com/2008/06/senator-obama-is-not-dirty-muslim.html

[Eric]

The thinking is simple. Publishing all the emails that we receive makes the senders and those copied who agree think twice before smearing further. It also may piss off those who would not spread the smear and cause them to contact the sender and apply pressure.

This is all about pressure and bringing it to bear in a way that fights back against those who don't want push back.

It's time to fight, not wrestle with whether or not it's the best thing to do. In an ideal world we all be well informed and not smearing candidates. We don't live in an ideal world, so can't be expected to react and behave in an ideal way. Fight the fight you're in, not the one you wish you had. Otherwise, you'll lose. See Kerry, John.

[Karoli]

Here's the problem I have with this specific situation: The email address was not acquired through the receipt of an email. He asked for it and was given it for the purpose of forwarding facts. To turn around and publish it without disclosure of that plan doesn't seem right to me.

If I receive a smear email that's forwarded and the address of the forward is in the email, I have no problem publishing the email address. But to ask someone for an email address for one purpose and then use it for another isn't right, in my opinion.

Obama has several proactive sites against smears, and they're worth using. I also have no problem publicly naming and shaming someone who spreads baseless lies for the purpose of destroying a candidate, and that includes publishing their email address if they're brazen enough to use it to forward the kind of filth they're spreading.

Joy Atwood is entitled to her opinion, racist and petty as it may be. What she is not entitled to is slander and libel, and the reporter who originally covered the story is as much as fault as Ms. Atwood, given that I believe she had a DUTY to correct the record rather than letting Atwood's hatemongering linger and stink up the airwaves the way it did. Yet, the reporter's email wasn't published, nor was the reporter held accountable for a report she clearly reported inaccurately and with certain bias. Why not?

Brace yourself, because there will be more before it's all said and done. All of the vitriol spewed in prior campaigns will feel like a walk in the park when compared to the racist, hateful and media-complicit hatemongering that takes place this year. I only hope it encourages rational people to look for rational discourse, rather than being sucked into the vortex of KKK-speak.

[Liz Ditz]

Karoli wrote:

Yet, the reporter's email wasn't published, nor was the reporter held accountable for a report she clearly reported inaccurately and with certain bias. Why not?

Karoli is mistaken. Tim Russo did publish Myrt Price's contact information here: WIOI's response and additional contact information for WIOI personnel at this post

Otherwise, Karoli and I have the same view on the problem with publishing Atwood's personal email.

[jennyalice]

I think I have received every single smear against Obama (and just about every other article on snopes.com).
Whenever I have time I send back an email explaining how what was sent to me is crap, whether it is about a candidate or George Carlin's thoughts on aging. Posting my email as recipient just punishes me for knowing someone who knows my email address or even worse, if you have a common name, sometimes you get email intended for other people. (I got harassed for not responding to the PTA potluck signups in Mississippi once...and I've never even been to the state.)

[Jeff Hess]

Shalom Liz,

Good wrap-up.

A while ago I started posting wrong-wing political emails forwarded to me by my dad under the category of On The Right.

I grew up in a conservative part of the Ohio -- the rural southeast around Marietta -- and I've known my share of wrong-wing racists and bigots. The vast majority of the people I was raised with who hold conservative view points, however, do so not because they’re evil but because that's what they know.

Often driven by generations of near and real poverty, as well as religious education, these views are hard to change because that would involve a shift in their most basic paradigms.

I attempt to affect some small change by posting the messages forwarded by my dad and adding commentary of my own to illuminate the errors in the messages. I don’t know that I’ve changed anyone’s positions, but I can say that when I’ve spoken with people who hold strong views opposed to my own, I’ve been listened to respectfully and I do my best to respond in kind.

The rules must be different however in this age of viral attacks conceived, planned and executed by people who are, I have every reason to believe, are truly evil in their intent. These attacks happen in minutes or hours, not days or weeks. Response must be equally swift.

If publishing publicly available information – and that is just what an email or IP address is on the Internet – can afflict those wishing to spread their bile, then I support that step. If that publication gives pause to the ignorant who have bought into the lies and restrains them from hitting that forward button, then I see that as a plus for public discourse.

If we remove the rocks, then there are fewer places for the lowly wastes of human genome to hide under.

B’shalom,

Jeff

[Ends do not Justify any Means]

Such tactics will hasten increasing governmental control over private email. It is possible to usher in a greater evil in the throes of self-righteousness, and such tactics lead directly to censorship of email. Publishing private email addresses is reprehensible, and I think those protesting their valor here know that it is reprehensible.