The web encourages lies and deceit.
It's impossible to know who lurks behind a funny nickname
* * Marcel Berlins
* The Guardian,
On the whole, I can't complain too much about the readers who respond to my
column online. The great majority present their argument in more or less
temperate terms. Most of them take issue with my point of view, which is how it
should be. Many support their case with helpful and relevant information. So
far, so civilised - the correct use of a blog. A minority express their
opposition by way of abuse, very personal remarks and hysterical ranting, but
I've had it far easier than many of my colleagues. I seriously considered suing
one commenter for libel; I would have won, and English law, for purposes of
libel litigation, allows the real identity behind an online pseudonym to be
discovered.
It is that anonymity that's at the hub of a debate and vote that takes place in
the European Parliament tomorrow. An Estonian MEP, Marianne Mikko, is worried
that a growing number of blogs are written with "malicious intentions or hidden
agendas". She proposes that bloggers identify themselves and declare any
interests they have in the issue they're writing about. Her concerns should be
taken seriously. We, the readers of blogs, do not, and normally cannot, know
who lurks behind the funny nickname. We need more information about the writers
so that we can decide how seriously to take their opinions. Has she a personal
stake in whatever it is under discussion? Does he belong to a dodgy or extreme
campaigning body? Is she the sister of the owner of the restaurant she's
recommending? Does he bear a personal grudge? We don't know.
Coincidentally, last week, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the world wide web,
confessed to his own worries about the way his invention was being used to
dispense disinformation, conspiracy theories (that 9/11 was the work of the US
government, for example) and harmful ideas. He particularly mentioned the
spreading of the rumours that the MMR vaccine risked leading to autism in
children. Also, he said, "the thinking of cults can spread very rapidly and
suddenly a cult which was 12 people who had some deep personal issues suddenly
finds a formula which is very believable ... which you can imagine spreading to
thousands of people and being deeply damaging." His solution - systems that
would give a website a label of trustworthiness once it had proved the
reliability of its sources - was less convincing.
For the moment, the advantages of allowing virtually unrestricted access to the
net outweigh the undoubted negatives mentioned by Mikko and Berners-Lee. But
what's also clear is that more and more participants are abusing that freedom,
whether as bloggers or on websites. We may soon have to consider devising
controls on entry, though what form they'll take is not easy to envisage. It is
possible that we will find out, in five or 10 or 20 years, that, in the
internet, we have created a monster we cannot tame, whose capacity for doing
harm exceeds any good it once brought.
Listening to the BBC World Service news bulletin the other night I was told
that a sheet of music written by "the composer Mozart" had been discovered in a
library in France. This upset me for a quite a while. Did they really need to
tell listeners that Mozart was a composer? (The serious press here and the BBC
home channels didn't.) Would there be anyone so ignorant of Mozart's calling as
to require an explanation? I gave the World Service the benefit of the doubt.
After all, a large proportion of its listenership comes from countries not
steeped in the European classical music tradition. Still, its listeners are
intelligent and knowledgeable - they have chosen to tune in to one of the
highest-quality stations in the world - and I would have thought that, for
them, the greatest of the great, whether in history or still living, and in
whatever field of endeavour they exhibited their supremacy, would require no
descriptive noun.
There are not all that many in that category: Mozart and Beethoven, Mandela,
Einstein, Muhammad Ali, Shakespeare, perhaps a few more. It may be that the
World Service has noticed a trend, veering towards greater ignorance, and is
right to label even Mozart. Such a trend may be universal. I'm depressingly
conscious that, as surveys continue to show, British youth's knowledge of
important historical events and characters is abysmal; if they have so little
idea who Winston Churchill was, can we expect them to know Mozart? And why
should the youth of other countries fare better? Perhaps, quite soon,
references in the serious media to all the great figures will have to be
explained.
At least the World Service didn't describe him as the "famous composer Mozart".
When I worked for the Times some years ago, it was forbidden to describe
someone as the "famous" (or "celebrated" or "well-known") writer, composer or
whatever. If they are genuinely famous, there is no need for the adjective; if
they're not, the adjective is a lie. I remember too that, until quite recently,
you could tell from the wording of a London Evening Standard billboard whether
or not someone who had just died was truly well-known. If it proclaimed "Famous
actor dies" you knew you probably hadn't heard of the deceased. A really famous
person would have his or her name in the huge letters of the billboard: "Lord
Olivier dies". The adjective "famous" would have been regarded as patronising.
This week Marcel saw the musical Zorro, based on the fictional adventure of the
black-caped and masked do-gooder of Spanish California: "A beguiling mix of
terrific flamenco dancing and singing, the Gipsy Kings' music and exuberant
action." He watched all of Thabo Mbeki's resignation speech: "With sadness. He
should have done so much more for his country."
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