Saturday, July 23, 2005

Yep, It's Still The Same Old Guardian

Via the great Tim Blair, we see that it didn't take long for the Guardian to get back to normalcy after a rare bit of sanity. The affiliations of the Guardian's sassy Muslim columnist Dilpazier Aslam were uncovered by The Daily Ablution, went essentially unchallenged, and formed the basis for Aslam's termination, yet bizarrely, the Guardian has seen fit to use the episode to attack - what else - bloggers of the right-wing variety:
Rightwing bloggers from the US, where the Guardian has a large online following, were behind the targeting last week of a trainee Guardian journalist who wrote a comment piece which they did not care for about the London bombings.

The story is a demonstration of the way the 'blogosphere' can be used to mount obsessively personalised attacks at high speed.

Within hours, Dilpazier Aslam was being accused on the internet of "violence" and belonging to a "terrorist organisation" - both completely untrue charges...

...The episode was a striking illustration of the way that blogs and bloggers can heat up the temperature and seek to settle scores - as well as raise legitimate concerns about journalism and transparency - when something awful happens in the streets of London.
A question for the editors and publishers of the Guardian: do you often sack employees for charges that are 'completely untrue'? How about some cheese to go with that whine?...

UPDATE 12:13 p.m.: Thanks to Leon H at Red State for the link!...

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