LinuxWorld Senior Editorial Staff Resigns 344
sachmet writes "In light of the interview with Fuat Kirccali, James Turner has announced on his blog the immediate resignation of the LinuxWorld senior editorial staff." From the post: "We regret that Sys-Con Media has
been unable to apply a standard of journalistic ethics that we can comfortably operate
under. We feel that recent articles published with the consent of Sys-Con Media fail to
meet minimum generally accepted journalistic codes, and because the management of
Sys-Con Media has failed to acknowledge that the articles are by all informed judgment
ethically unsupportable, we have decided we must find other avenues for our work."
award winning linux workstation (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Honesty (Score:3, Interesting)
It will certainly be a costly action on his part
It was an unpaid position, wasn't it?
Re:Honesty - But what about Linus (Score:2, Interesting)
This is sufficient for me to get an account here. (Score:3, Interesting)
Toon Moene (physicist at large).
Grab your copy of the page while its there (Score:5, Interesting)
Ten Ethical Principles (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Define a set of values
2. Tell the truth
3. Respect human dignity
4. Recognize the complexity of human nature
5. Be distrustful of unchecked power.
6. Foster a diversity of views
7. Challenge "group think."
8. Take time to listen and to think.
9. Encourage criticism and self-examination
10. Correct mistakes
Have a look at a brief description [collegepubs.com] of each of them.
What the hell is LinuxWorld? (Score:4, Interesting)
But what the hell *is* LinuxWorld? All the folks who resigned were apparently unpaid?? Does anyone besides Fuat make any money for their work? Why would anyone give their time for free to such a tool? I've never really looked at the site prior to this flamefest so I don't have a good feeling for what the heck it is. Was it a useful interesting magazine? If so, why wouldn't they pay their people?
It means we can ignore syscon (Score:3, Interesting)
unpaid editors? (Score:2, Interesting)
Glad to see you guys will be finding a more suitable outlet for your work. For what it's worth, I'm proud of you and hope to follow in your footsteps soon.
(posting anonymously because I DO get food on my table indirectly from SysCon)
Re:Honesty (Score:3, Interesting)
So you wording is wrong and disregards the lesser actions taken before drastic action was threatened and then acted upon. There was dialogue and the dialogue was mostly ignored.
Now is the critical time for /.ers support (Score:5, Interesting)
After all these folks who resigned are geeks of high knowledge and high moral fiber who are making the ultimate sacrifice for OUR community and on behalf of one our most important members. They are standing up for what's right. They are standing up for Groklaw. We need to stand up for them.
They gave up their jobs for reasons the right reasons. If there is a time to hit Sys-Con where it hurts it's now and financially.
It's not just about standing up for our own, it's also about letting these folks know that the
There's a special place in heaven for PJ and the LinuxWorld Senior Editorial Staff.
Re:Honesty (Score:5, Interesting)
But, public figure or not, publishing people's home addresses is outside the generally accepted practices of professional journalists. Sarcastic commentary and personally identifying information about about elderly relatives is outside the generally accepted practices of professional journalists. Mocking their religious choices and age is outside the generally accepted practices of professional journalists.
Doing so with obvious spite is calculated to increase people's disgust.
I doubt you'll find many highly visible examples of the home addresses, phone numbers, elderly relatives, and religious affliations of the SCOX attorneys being publicized and mocked. People are justified in being angry that PJ has been subjected to that -- just as SCO's attorneys would be justified in thgeir anger if it were done to them.
Re:And more... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not sure where he stands in the pecking order, but Steve Suehring [sys-con.com] has also announced his resignation [braingia.org], for the same reason.
not all the editors resigned (Score:2, Interesting)
Turner is to be applauded, but he's being disengenuous here: the "senior" editors were unpaid writers who used LinuxWorld as a venue to promote their consulting services. The _real_ staff -- the ones who draw a paycheck -- did not leave.
Re:Honesty (Score:5, Interesting)
M'oG went to PJ's mother's home, harrassed her, and then published her address and photos of her home on the Internet. No one did anything like that to any SCOX board member, and if they had, the linux community's name would have been dragged through the mud in the media. There's only one possible reason for publishing PJ's mom's personal info, and that's "We know where you live" style intimidation, pure and simple.
Unfair comparison (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, you seem to be mixing tabloid and news journalism in your examples. Maureen claims to be an actual journalist, not a Papparazza. If she were to get a job with the National Enquirer and publish pictures of PJ next to Bigfoot, OK, fine. But the key is that most certainly isn't journalism.
But this was getting passed as real journalism along with material that actually is real journalism on LW. What Marueen did is NOT journalism. It was a personal attack. It wasn't professional. For instance, you won't see anything like that in the NYT or WSJ. For someone who claims to be a journalist, that was reprehensible.
The response to this piece by many zealots has been much more unethical than the publishing of the article. I realize that the response, in particular the DOS and threatening email, is attributal to only a small minority of OSS and Linux supporters, and that many of the leaders in the field have spoken out against them. But the denial of those actions has been almost perfunctory. We should be screaming about those who smear the Linux and OSS name with illegal and unethical attacks at least at the same volume we're screaming about O'Gara and Sys-Con.
That's not unethical, it's flat illegal. Not to split hairs, but I don't see it as unethical because the people doing it don't claim to have a code of ethics. To me, revenge in kind isn't necessarily unfair. I agree it's a bad idea because the OSS community is fighting an uphill PR battle anyway, and fighting it against someone with a media outlet isn't smart. But to continue my prior point, that ain't journalism either.
If you choose to put yourself in the spotlight, you can expect to have the press breathing down your neck. You don't have to like it but you might as well get used to it. It's a part of American life. It's the obverse side of the "freedom of the press" coin. Would you really prefer to live in a place where the press is constrained? There are those reading Slashdot who do, in fact, live in such a place. Ask them which is preferable.
Again, ethics vs. law. I don't think anyone's calling for overturning of the 1st Amendment. People are criticizing Maureen, not the law. What Maureen did wasn't illegal. It was certainly unethical as a journalist, though not as the hack Paparazza that she is.
I basically get what you're trying to say, but I think you can be objective and still be nauseated by what she did as someone who claims to be a journalist. Thankfully, she finally made it much easier to discredit her, which to me made that article a bonehead move on her part.
BOYCOTT SYSCON AND ITS SPONSORS (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't just cancel your subscriptions to syscon publications, boycott their sponsors. Make it a liability for someone to advertise with SYSCON. Don't just alert SYSCON that you're buying from their advertiser's competiters, alert the advertisers that if they continue advertising in SYSCON publications, then you will send all your business to their competitors.
It wouldn't take much of this until the real person that should be resigning does: Fuat Kirccali
People have asked how this is different than other public figures like the runaway bride and I'll tell you how: Do you know the runaway bride's address? Do you know the addresses of her family? Would you have a reason to attack the runaway bride?
Part of ethics is determining each case on its own individual merit and issues. Pamela Jones runs a blog. The internet is famous for its anonymity. Your words stand for themselves. Even if you publish something controversial, you don't have to fear physical reprisal. If someone hunts you down, that's a stalker. There are laws to stop them. In essence, Maureen O'Gara did the work of a stalker and made the information available for those who would wish to do PJ physical harm. There was nothing newsworthy to make this necessary. There was no justification.
Jones' religion (Score:2, Interesting)
Here is the difference. (Score:4, Interesting)
With Gannon, it was shown that he had LOTS of special contacts and such with the White House.
The story wasn't about Gannon. The story was about how the White House had no problems giving special permissions to a gay hooker and allowing him to use a fake name to lob soft questions.
Now, IF MOG had turned up evidence that PJ was supported by IBM or IBM's lawyers and faked the "privacy" issue in an attempt to hide that connection, then THAT would have been the story.
But even THAT would NOT have been a reason to publish her Mom's address and pictures of her house.
Since MOG could NOT dig up the story she wanted to publish
If Gannon had NOT had any special priviledges from the White House and had NOT used a fake name, then publishing personal details about him would also be over the line.
Don't try to hide behind that bullshit. Digging into people's lives takes time and money.
There will ALWAYS be a discrepency between what the average person can spend (time and money) digging and what "the powerful" can spend.
So there will never be "a level playing field" like you believe.
Now I'm really confused. (Score:4, Interesting)
It sounds more like the
So it should be VERY easy to track down the machine using that IP address at that time and find out whether it was an "attack" or an attempt to cache their server.
Here's the first step: http://www.arin.net/whois/ [arin.net]
That should be able to tell you who owns that block.
And that's the problem. Yet in your "blog", you state:
Yet now you seem to be saying that the "distributed" portion was NOT the wget action you mentioned.
So, the "distributed" portion was nothing more or less than the
Which only leaves that single IP address with the wget command. And it should be easy to determine whether that was an "attack" or an attempt to cache their site.
Re:Honesty (Score:2, Interesting)
What it really sounds like, is an incitement to theft and/or violence.
Too little, too grudgingly and too late? (Score:2, Interesting)
To Our Valued Readers: (May 13, 2005) - Our syndication arrangement with LinuxGram has recently ended after ethical questions raised by our readers in one of the stories published in last week's issue. I agree with their view on this matter; therefore I pulled the article shortly after it was published earlier this week. I apologize to our readers, to the open source community, our LinuxWorld editors, and Ms. Pamela Jones for publishing the article.
Fuat Kircaali Publisher, SYS-CON Media
Re:Honesty (Score:3, Interesting)
Thats because her religion wasn't directly mocked, but instead was used to make false assumptions about PJ and imply worse things about her. For example:
Now, according to one of Pamela's neighbors and fellow Jehovah's Witness, being a Jehovah's Witness is pretty much a full-time job in and of itself.
I have friend's who are Jehovah's Witness, and this is a baldface lie. Sure they spend a good deal of time working for their beliefs, but it is no "full time job" for them. The way this is written it implies that PJ is part of some cult.Also:
Witnesses also don't usually get involved in worldly affairs.
This is the worst. After it is implied that PJ is a freaky religious person, it is then implied that she is a bad Jehovah's Witness. Good ones, according to Maureen O'Gara, "don't usually get involved in worldly affairs," which implies that PJ is a bad JW because the whole reason any news organization cares about her is because she is getting involved in the worldly affair called Linux. Its a cheap shot that is hidden in wording. I study marketing all day (or what it should be called "the way to say things without actually saying them") and this is obviously some unethical stuff.
Re:Honesty (Score:3, Interesting)
PJ's articles stand on their own merits. It is TOTALLY irrelevant who she is (although if she is NOT a paralegal, her legal procedure comments would be much less persuasive.)
As for who is paying her, if anyone, that is totally irrelevant as well. It is NOT totally irrelevant for MoG given that she has revealed inside contacts with SCO, access to information she could not have had without such contacts, and a willingness to inflate the importance of that information for SCO's benefit. All of PJ's stuff is procured from either the court records, people who witnessed court events, and the commentary of the GrokLaw community.
Finally, NO information about PJ's income source or ANY influence on GrokLaw by anyone was established in MoG's article, despite the snide reference to PJ living near to an IBM facility.
What WAS revealed is that MoG gained access to PJ's cell phone logs, which is definitely a violation of privacy and possibly illegal as well.