Christopher Pearson writes in the Weekend Australian about a current situation involving Club Troppo and other prominent oz political blogs:
GRAHAM Young is the founding editor of a well-regarded e-journal called On Line Opinion, and is a regular contributor to The Australian. I’d describe him as belonging in the centre of the political spectrum, perhaps tending to mild conservatism.
In December he published a piece arguing the case against gay marriage by the pro-family campaigner, Bill Muehlenberg, and then a series of spirited exchanges on the merits of the argument. It was not the first article he’d run on the subject ; that honour had gone to Rodney Croome, a gay activist. Nor were most of the essays run opposed to gay marriage.
Young commented on the blog in mid-December. “The On Line Opinion approach is one that many find difficult to accept, and we are currently under attack from a number of gay activists because we dared to publish 1 which is mostly a pastiche of comments by gay activists, even though the majority of articles I can find on the site support gay marriage. And by attack I mean attempting to intimidate me, sponsors or advertisers. How ironic . . . when we are sponsoring the Human Rights Awards.” …
On account of the Muehlenberg piece, Young told me two major advertisers had just pulled out: the ANZ Bank and IBM. Comparing this year’s January gross ad sales with last year’s, he calculated that revenue from his main category of advertising had fallen by 96 per cent. Young is worried that these bizarre decisions will adversely affect other websites as well as his own and could even lead to some of them closing down.
Courts might construe that as the result of an indiscriminate secondary boycott, in contravention of the Trade Practices Act.
That’s because Young and a group of other political sites have formed a network called The Domain, to bundle up their readers as a more attractive package for advertisers. The sites are very diverse in terms of ideology, from the ultra-leftist John Passant, to the more mainstream centre-Left Larvatus Prodeo, Club Troppo, Andrew Bartlett, skepticlawyer and the likes of Henry Thornton and Jennifer Marohasy. …
I’m not that fussed about the loss of income flowing from the actions of these corporate thugs. I don’t even know how much it is except that in broad terms it’s piddling money at least for us: Troppo has never chased a mass audience. It’s the issue of principle than concerns me deeply.
I should make clear that I also find Muehlenberg’s article offensive. Not because it opposes gay marriage; plenty of gay and lesbian people do too, or at least don’t regard it as an objective that should be pushed aggressively. Erstwhile Troppo contributor Geoff Honnor is an example. It’s Muehlenberg’s assumption that gay people generally are by nature promiscuous, and that they collectively harbour a hidden agenda to redefine marriage as not involving sexual fidelity that I and no doubt many gay people will rightly find deeply offensive. It seems to have escaped Muehlenberg’s attention that promiscuity is hardly confined to homosexuals, or that lots of prominent heterosexuals have advocated and practised open marriage and no doubt still do. It’s a classic example of the sort of discrimination community abhorrence for which underpins federal and state equal opportunity legislation. It is no more fair or accurate to assert that gays generally are promiscuous than to suggest that gypsies are habitual thieves, all men potential rapists or that New Zealanders harbour carnal desires for sheep.
However the actions of IBM and ANZ are much more offensive than those of Muehlenberg as far as I’m concerned. Muehlenberg is merely expressing an opinion, albeit a false, ignorant and hurtful one. He isn’t attempting to force anyone to share it or coerce them to act in accordance with it. The same can’t be said for IBM or ANZ. Voltaire apparently never said “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” but it’s a fair summary of his beliefs and I share them. It’s both easy and meaningless to defend the free speech rights only of those with whom you agree; it only becomes meaningful in liberal democratic terms if the speech being suppressed offends influential elites and even oneself.
What can be done? As a lawyer my first thought was for legal remedies. But that’s a bit tricky. Australia’s Constitution contains an implied freedom of political communication, and this is indisputably political subject matter. However the freedom only constrains the actions of governments, it doesn’t meaningfully restrict the actions of private persons or corporations.
Then I considered equal opportunity legislation. The various State and Territory laws certainly prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexuality or political opinion, both of which arguably fit the bill here.((Most equal opportunity legislation prohibits discrimination based on imputed as well as actual opinion. It seems clear from the statements of IBM and ANZ spokesmen that we are being punished for imputed opinions about homosexuality even though we neither hold them, published them nor assisted their publication. ~ KP)) However those laws generally only apply to businesses supplying goods or services, accommodation, education, club membership and the like. Here it’s Troppo that’s supplying the service (advertising space) and IBM and ANZ who are (or rather were) purchasing it.
Then there’s the secondary boycott provisions of section 45D of the Trade Practices Act, recently renamed the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (Cth). My first thought was that maybe this was a primary boycott which wouldn’t be covered. But on second thought, these corporate bullies are boycotting Troppo and the other blogs not for anything we’ve done or said but for the actions of a third party namely Online Opinion which merely assists us to source and place advertising on our blogs. It certainly looks a lot like a secondary boycott. Moreover, according to Pearson’s article, spokesmen for both corporations have made admissions about their actions and motivations which might well prove legally fatal.
Nevertheless I’m not at all sure that I can be bothered suing these corporations even though I suspect it’s a clearcut case. IBM and ANZ both have very “long pockets” and I’m not at all sure that my principles extend as far as to expend the time, energy and money that would be required to fight them through the courts. However I’ll certainly be joining the others in sending an appropriate letter of demand and taking whatever other actions we reasonably can to hold IBM and ANZ to account for their unconscionable conduct. I’ve already instituted my own personal primary boycott against them. Of course I’m not urging Troppo readers to do likewise, partly because I don’t especially want to be sued myself. Nevertheless I have always acted on the belief that one of the few real powers we as individuals possess is to refuse to patronise businesses that provide poor service or otherwise act unconscionably. On just about any approach to liberal democratic freedoms, IBM and ANZ are acting in a grossly unconscionable fashion.
Elsewhere on this topic – Skepticlawyer; John Passant; Graham Young (editor of Online Opinion); Jennifer Wilson; Kim at Larvatus Prodeo
Update and apology – This post and Don’s on the same topic have generated considerable debate and resulted in disclosure of information not originally known when I wrote this post several days ago. Mel(aleuca) has suggested in the comment box to this post that an apology to original OLO complainant Gregory Storer is warranted. Given what we all now know, I agree.
I wrote the primary post on information that a mysterious but identified small group of “gay activists” within ad agencies had effectively ambushed OLO (and by extension Troppo and the other Domain blogs) by orchestrating a campaign for an advertiser boycott of OLO because it had published an article on gay marriage by Bill Muehlenberg which they found offensive (as do I). Had that been the situation, the activists’ actions would have been highly objectionable in my view, despite the offensive nature of the original article, for the sorts of reasons discussed in the primary post. The events would also have raised secondary boycott issues (albeit with significant legal, evidentiary and practical uncertainties as discussed earlier in the thread).
It has subsequently emerged from discussions here and at LP that the actual dispute was about the extremely toxic/offensive comment threads to the Muehlenberg post rather than the article itself, and that there had been extensive dealings between OLO and the complainants (most prominently Gregory Storer) where they sought unsuccessfully to have the problem addressed. It appears they would see themselves as having approached advertisers as a last resort. Personally I would have preferred to see them take less drastic expedients such as anti-discrimination/equal opportunity complaints, because the result of approaching advertisers might well be the closure of a valuable and longstanding independent opinion journal (whatever one may think of its moderation policies).
In those circumstances I certainly agree that I should apologise to Gregory Storer unreservedly, and I do so. I feel both angry and stupid, but hopefully most of us learn from our mistakes.
I also want to record that, although this apology is obviously implicitly critical of Graham Young, I’m very unhappy about the impact all these events seem likely to have both on him and OLO. Online Opinion is an extraordinarily valuable publication for Australian political discourse and culture in my view. Many readers may not know that its existence and development are overwhelmingly due to Graham’s efforts, determination and personal financial backing over many years. I can only hope that all of us in the blogosphere will find a way to draw a line under these unfortunate events and do what we reasonably can to help Online Opinion to survive and prosper.
- Muehlenberg’s essay[↩]
Nope not a secondary boycott, this has all been discussed elsewhere. You’re right, it’s a fools errand and a waste of time and money.
A bit of fact checking wouldn’t have gone astray here.
Graham Young has repeatedly claimed that the objections of the “gay activists” were were to his publication of Muehlenberg’s article, when in fact the objections were to the moderation of comments on the article. This response to Graham’s December blog post on the issue makes the distinction quite plainly.
While all “The Domain” blogs moderate their comments, only at OLO does there appear to be a backlog of unheeded recommendations for deletion. If John Passant, Jennifer Marohasy, SkepticLawyer, Larvatus Prodeo and Club Troppo want to align themselves financially with OLO, then it would seem a simple matter of due diligence to ensure that OLO’s moderation values also line up.
Patrick
If you’re referring to SL’s post, the question wasn’t discussed or resolved in any meaningful way. Surprising to an extent given that several lawyers participated before the thread was closed.
From my scanning of the discussion, the only cogent argument made against the proposition that this may be an actionable secondary boycott is the fact that the conduct must be engaged in for the PURPOSE of causing loss or damage to the boycotted party. Someone suggested (it may have been you) that ANZ/IBM’s purpose no doubt was to avoid damage to their own brand by being associated however unfairly with anti-gay sentiments in a publication in which they advertised.
While confessing that trade practices isn’t my area of expertise as an academic lawyer, I’m pretty sure that this issue of purpose would indeed be the major hurdle in any litigation, and it might well be a major one. On one hand, the boycotters’ purpose/s need only INCLUDE causing loss or damage to the boycottee. Unlike other provisions of the TPA it doesn’t need to be the sole, dominant or even a substantial purpose. Moreover, there are some IR-related cases where the court has fairly readily accepted/inferred that causing damage was one of the purposes of a trade union picket even if the main purpose was to bring about IR award changes etc on the part of the employer. However there are others where the court held that purpose and intention/knowledge are two different things and purposes must be positively proved. That is, just because you intend or at least know that your action is going to cause loss or damage to the person boycotted doesn’t mean that that was your purpose: it may just have been an unfortunate if predictable means to an end: Troppo et al and democratic free speech are just collateral damage!
I don’t intend suing or even researching the question more deeply than that because, as the primary post observes, it makes little financial or practical sense for me to do so. However I’m a little surprised that you are as utterly unconcerned by this sort of corporate thuggery as appears to be the case. The issues here are not black and white or either/or. It’s entirely possible, and in my view the intellectually and morally correct position, to deplore both Muehlenberg’s words and the actions of ANZ and IBM though for different reasons. Taking sides is unnecessary and IMO intellectually dishonest or at the very least an example of ill-considered kneejerk ideological partisanship.
So the best way for advertisers to avoid being boycotted is never to advertise here in the first place?
What is this nonsense about sponsors withdrawing advertising?
This because the article is “touchy”, there has been actually a bit of debate in the wake, which one thinks is the point of current affairs blogs?
As a member of the public irked by the inconsistencies of blog moderation at some sites, would like to think that this is not going to be about people shutting down conversation on an issue because contrary views to someone or others own cherished shibboleths are put under scrutiny.
I loath some of the bunkum produced, particularly populist rightist contributors posters at Online Opinion, but please Graham, if your position is to allow free (as opposed to circumscribed on the one hand, or hate speech on the other), don’t let others deter you- we only get a complete picture when flow is two way and not influenced by moderator prejudice ( perish the thought!), or worse still coercion from corporate interests.
Muehlenberg’s piece Ive not read, it sounds like crap, as is Pearson’s, trying to pour oil on troubled waters.
Hence posters with half a brain ought to be able to shoot down the worst conceptions like fish in a barrel.
I must admit, this is revealing to me, the story here. It shows proves me right in my hunch that blogs are under pressure to censor out issues not popular with vested interests, such as with criticism of Israel, for example.
Was the advertising problem to do with the removal of Susan Prior?
This is a story that brings to head some issues troubling not just for blog managers but posters who have seen other media dumbed down and don’t want to see the process extended to blogging.
Re the issue itself, it looked interesting in parts, the knack is sorting wheat from chaff (bulk), but it seems to boil down to two sets of activists again doing battle upon the altar of the gay marriage/lifestyle stuff that gets chewed over for the psychic health of society, when overt intense action, such as in Egypt currently, hasn’t caught the public’s attention.
It begins to include the situational politics identity politics overlap, which complicates an already subjective atmosphere suggestive of turbulent emotions and consequent clouded judgement(s) again turning acrid.
All stuff of life.
ringil
I don’t generally read long comment threads at other blogs/sites because I just don’t have the time. There was no reason why I should have done so in this case either because I had seen no suggestion that the concern was with the comment thread rather than Muehlenberg’s article itself.
Now that you’ve pointed that out, I’ve gone back and read the first 7 pages of a very long discussion (22 pages) but haven’t so far found any comment that I would regard as requiring deletion (clearly Graham responded and deleted some comments so I don’t know what they were). At least up to page 7 it’s a robust discussion that stays within the bounds of reasonable civility IMO. Can you point me towards the comments that you demanded/requested should be deleted?
Penultimately, even if the discussion at OLO overstepped bounds of appropriate civil discussion that provides neither a moral nor (conceivably though subject to issues discussed at #3 above) legal basis for advertisers to boycott blogs which have no connection whatever with that discussion nor any ability to affect OLO’s moderation policy. What I don’t know, however, is whether at any point prior to Pearson’s approaching them for comment ANZ or IBM were made aware that their actions in pulling advertising were effectively punishing not just OLO but Troppo et al as well. If they didn’t know that then their actions at least until very recently may be more defensible. It will be instructive to see whether they change their stance now they DO know what they’re doing.
Finally, if you regard toxic comment threads and the moderation policies which lead to them as providing a sufficient basis for soliciting major corporates to use their advertising muscle to coerce compliance, I wonder whether you’ve read many of the comment threads at Andrew Bolt’s or Tim Blair’s blogs? And I wonder whether any major corporate has ever boycotted News Limited as a result? I bet I know the answer.
One lives and learns.
Ken;
I can’t see what the two firms have done wrong other than withdraw their business, which they are entitled to do. They may have keejerked, not understood the nature of the website and are concerned with their brands being associated with people that could damage them, however they should have the right to be cowards without the law going after them.
If this refers to the two advertisers I can’t see how they show any ideology . spineless perhaps but not ideological.
Come to think of it a little further the firms possibly use the same advertising firm that pulled them out at the same time without each firm knowing the other’s actions.
Ken, as one of the principals for one of the blogs on the Domain I’d be happy to let you see all of the comments, and correspondence for that matter, with respect to deletions on the OLO forum. Whoever Ringit is they have no regard for the truth, and are probably not in any position to know what the truth is in any event, so you can add reckless to the charge as well. It is a malicious comment and typical of the sort of nonsense we are up against.
In my article for OLO this morning I have isolated the one comment that has been instanced by the known activist involved in this – Gregory Storer. You can read the article at http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=11583.
I know that it was the article and not the comments because IBM requested that their ad not appear on that article. The comments thread, which occurs on the forum, was not mentioned.
I also set out my reasons for publishing Muehlenberg, which commenters here might find interesting.
Graham
Thanks Graham. I agree with just about every word in your article and I’ll link it from the foot of the primary post.
I wonder is there any other way we can maintain pressure on ANZ and IBM to reverse their disgraceful stand. What about an open letter inserted in major newspapers and signed by prominent supporters of freedom of speech and media diversity? A bit hackneyed I know, but it usually seems to generate significant follow up free publicity?
BTW The bit of your article with which I would take issue is the proposition that Muehlenberg’s piece is “a researched article couched in fairly neutral language”. It’s certainly not the way it reads to me. Moreover, I don’t think that gathering together a few selectively inflammatory quotes from some gay radicals and then asserting or implying that they somehow represent a general gay agenda that can be imputed to gays and lesbians generally amounts to a “researched article”. You allude to this problem obliquely in your qualification “whether those quotes give an accurate picture of gay relations or not”, but that’s putting it very mildly indeed.
I’m in no sense suggesting this article should not have been published, but it is a pretty shabby effort on Muehlenberg’s part and worthy of the condemnation it mostly received in the parts of your comment thread that I resd. Moreover, I think that’s another point that needs to be made. Critics of OLO’s position appear to lack basic understanding of the nature of new media in general and the blogosphere in particular. It’s a conversation and you only get a proper understanding of it from following it. At the very least that requires reading all the article/posts on this monthly topic, which certainly present all sides of this controversial topic fairly and fully. However someone who is really interested would read and participate in the comment box discussion and in that way ensure that all views are fully discussed. As I said, my general impression from the first 7 pages of discussion on the Muehlenberg post was that it was a good robust discussion where the balance of opinion was very much pro-gay marriage or at least strongly anti-Muehlenberg. The person representing homosexuality as a “perversion” was in a tiny minority and that view would only appeal to a reader already possessing a deeply formed prejudice to that effect. Any gay activist with a modicum of intelligence would conclude that OLO’s series in general and the Muehlenberg conversation in particular have significantly advanced the public debate and progress towards acceptance of gay marriage as a just and non-threatening (if low priority in my view) advance in Australian law and society. It appears that Messrs Storer and Ringit are not exactly deep political thinkers.
Incidentally i really liked this comment from Jennifer Wilson on the comment thread to your latest post.
Ken, might I suggest a slogan for your campaign: “If you don’t advertise on Troppo you are a thug who hates free speech!”
That last comment really illustrates just how touchy these issues can get.
Whoops, Tim snuck in underneath, the comment am referring to is 13. Am wary of the idea that gays should follow the zionist lobby example and use lobbying clout to suppress oposition, even irrational opposition, against a need for free speech and the fairest rather than most partisan result.
It all devolves down the evolutionary tree back to barnyard behaviour in the end, with humans beings. Strip away superficialities and it’s not more intelligent than the living process modernism despises, of the middle ages village.
Tim
I don’t think you do your own rep much credit by trivialising this issue. As you should know from reading Graham Young’s piece, there is quite cogent evidence that there is an organised boycott of advertising not only on troppo but several of Australia’s largest political blogs. Moreover the existence of one of Australia’s most prominent and longest-standing independent opinion journals in OLO is threatened by that boycott. It appears that it stems from pressure placed on major corporates by a couple of individuals working for advertising agencies who handle ad placements that affect us all, because these individuals apparently disapproved of a specific article published in OLO which was (a) not so offensive as reasonably to justify such action; (b) balanced by other articles putting all sides of the issue; and (c) in any event nothing whatever to do with Troppo, LP or any of the other blogs concerned. I wonder if you would have the same attitude if (say) Australian Geographic or New Matilda or some such magazine was being driven into bankruptcy by an effective boycott depriving them of just about all their advertising revenue and orchestrated by multinational fossil fuel corporations because those magazines had dared to publish an article which trenchantly condemned the greenhouse skeptic movement? It’s not hard to guess the answer, but as a matter of fundamental intellectual honesty the issue of principle doesn’t change merely because the article which triggered the boycott is one with which you personally disagree.
[…] Troppo bullied by corporate thugs (clubtroppo.com.au) […]
Paul,
This topic appears to have nothing whatsoever to do with Israel and yet twice now you have snuck in attacks on Israel. You appear to be a mite wee bit obsessed.
It is to be regretted that the hosting of blogs in Australia is so narrow. I had not realised that Domain and Crikey were so dominant in the environment.
Domain does not host any of the blogs mentioned to the best of my knowledge. Graham Young and OLO simply proposed an arrangement, which several prominent blogs accepted, whereby it would assist us with sourcing advertising and producing the Nielsen ratings by which mainstream ad agencies work out payment rates. Crikey OTOH does host the blogs in its stable.
I can’t for the life of me see what what the problem is here, Ken. A couple of corporations, the ANZ and IBM, have acted on a matter of principle and risked a campaign of vilification such as that currently being waged by yourself, Skeptic Lawyer and Graham Young. They have also bravely risked legal action. ANZ and IBM have exercised their free speech in the finest manner possible, and at significant risk to themselves.
Graham Young chose of his own volition to publish a piece that was designed to inflame prejudice and hatred. It is precisely the type of opinions expressed by Muehlenberg that licence anti-gay hate crime- NSW alone has had close to 100 anti-gay hate crime murders since 1980 according to the Australian Institute of Criminology. Look at the type of supporters Muehlenberg attracts, as per various supportive comments on various websites, and you can almost touch and breathe in the hate. If Muehlenberg is David Irving, his supporters are the skinheads with the knuckledusters.
And Young has encouraged Muehlenberg to stir up hate over many years, as this list of his articles dating back to 2004 attests: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/author.asp?id=3123
Club Troppo and the other so-called “Domain” blogs have either failed to take the issue seriously, or as an above commenter suggests, failed to do due diligence. As a result you’ve entwined your own fortunes with Graham Young’s and this has had certain consequences. While I’m sorry about those consequences, I think it proves the old adage-
“If you lie down with dogs, don’t be surprised if you get up with fleas”.
This sort of things happen all the time — often for things not nearly as bad as publishing spiteful articles, and whilst I don’t think it’s fair to punish the group for the actions of Online Opinion, I’m not surprised it’s happened.
Drugs in sport are a good example. In the sport of cycling, for example, probably one of the cleanest sports now due to massive amount of massively invasive testing that is done (cf., football, rugby etc. — all the other sports where it is swept under the carpet), sponsors have dropped their funding entirely when a single individual in a team has been caught cheating, and German TV won’t even show the Tour de France this year because someone _might_ get caught cheating. I think what this shows is that many sponsors are extremely finicking about with whom they associate, which I think is entirely unsuprising, and so it doesn’t surprise me at all that ANZ and others offloading themselves. I also think that there’s a huge difference between publishing something that could get in the hate-crime register, and comments by morons which you can read everyday in most of the online papers that allow it.
I don’t see why you are having a go at the advertisers.
They have been on the receiving end of leftist revenge hate so many times that it’s no wonder they get skittish about this sort of thing. The only real surprising thing is that they sponsor political blogs in the first place. I would have thought that most companies would avoid them for precisely this reason.
Anyway, the title of this article is retarded.
You aren’t being bullied by “corporate thugs”. Removing their advertising is not bullying.
The corporates are the ones being bullied here. And due to that bullying they have had to remove their advertisements because they don’t want to be involved in some HREOC case or media frenzy over a gay lobby boycott of their business.
For what it’s worth – http://belshaw.blogspot.com/2011/02/anz-ibm-freedom-of-speech.html
Ken, Gregory Storer’s response to Graham Young is relevant here.
Not relevant is how civilised you personally find the comments. OLO claims to value diverse views and publishes site rules prohibiting language that is “vulgar, obscene, profane or which may harass or cause distress or inconvenience to, or incite hatred of, any person.” Yet many believe that these policies are selectively enforced, to the disadvantage of sexual minorities. After exhausting the remedies available to him on the OLO site, Mr Storer has simply exercised his right to ask OLO’s sponsors if their corporate values are consistent with what is appearing on the site, regardless of the rules.
Nor is the fact that there are worse cases relevant. We don’t lose our right to complain about assaults in Adelaide because there are murders in Melbourne. I doubt that you really want to suggest that because vilification happens elsewhere, we should be required to put up with abuse on OLO.
Yobbo
I agree that the person/s with bullying/thuggish intent is the gay activist/political candidate Gregory Storer. ANZ and IBM simply buckled at the knees reflexively no doubt for immediate commercial reasons, rather than even consider taking anything resembling a principled stand. They are undeniably the immediate agents of the thuggery though without the requisite thuggish intent/purpose under the TPA to inflict loss or damage. Their purpose was merely to avoid and deflect damage to themselves that might otherwise have been inflicted by Storer etc. Graham Young put it quite well in his response that I linked from the primary post:
ringil
I suppose there’s an argument that OLO should not have such a fuzzy and meaningless set of rules on their site. I don’t think it can sensibly be claimed that a comment from a fundie christian (that was instantly condemned by others) to the effect that homosexuality is a “perversion” could reasonably be regarded as either vulgar, obscene or profane, nor do I think that it would be likely to cause distress or inconvenience to any reasonable person in the context. Does such a comment “incite hatred”? Maybe for some, although one man’s pleasure is another’s perversion! Moreover, I think the accusation of inciting hatred fits Muehlenberg’s article more comfortably than any of the comments. Graham’s problem is that he’s set his own bar too high. On a literal reading his rules prohibit a comment or article if ANY PERSON however thin-skinned and unreasonable professes to be distressed, inconvenienced etc. If I was him I’d be sticking in the word “reasonable” in several places to avoid the sort of rather silly bush lawyer argument you and Storer are trying to run. If you’re actually interested in achieving positive gains for gay and lesbian issues generally and gay marriage in particular, I think you’d be well advised to go back and read both the comment thread to the Muehlenberg article and today’s on Graham’s article, not to mention the various blogosphere contributions and ask yourselves these related questions:
Are my actions assisting the cause I support or instead alienating many of the very people who would generally be strong supporters?
Or am I merely being self-indulgent, petulant, narrow-minded and short-sighted?
Jennifer Wilson also makes these points eloquently (see links above).
Yobs says:
Dude, I’d reconsider if I were you. Look at the deal just announced some hours ago.
AOL to buy The Huffington Post for $315 million
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/07/us-aol-thehuffingtonpost-idUSTRE7160RR20110207
This is an amazing deal. According to Dealbook, Huff post had $60 million in revs last year putting the valuation of this website up in the stratosphere and possibly an indication of the beginning of a stock boom in the US for all social media and the rest.
This is a huge deal. No wonder Graham is pissed :-) ad revenue is being sold at 5.25 times as a freaking multiple for an opinion website.
Kim’s take:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2011/02/07/on-line-opinion-and-the-advertising-and-free-speech-controversy/
That’s her own view, not a collective LP position, but I think it appears clear that LP authors have a different approach to this question than most of the other bloggers affected.
I’d add that, irrespective of the chain of events leading up to this kerfuffle, I haven’t been sanguine for some time that mainstream advertising would continue to provide a reliable source of revenue for niche political and public affairs sites. The potential risk for them probably appears greater than the benefit. I said on LP that I think that if we decided we needed the money (and that would probably be for expansion, otherwise we can muddle on through) I wouldn’t think it impossible to sell space to ideological soulmates, as is done by some US liberal blogs. Such a strategy wouldn’t work for OLO, and I wonder also if advertisers decide to vacate the field of political sites, whether or not there might be some pretty dire implications for publications such as Crikey and New Matilda.
I would also think that the MSM publications would have a lot to lose if advertisers become more wary of association with virulent comments threads, particularly some of the News Limited “blogs”.
@28 – JC, HuffPo is massive in terms of page views and there’s a different context in the US, I’d have thought, for most of these issues. Australia is a bit of a backwater both in terms of the actual size of the population, and the market for political and public affairs writing, which Sally Young at Melbourne Uni has demonstrated really is very small:
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2010/12/14/political-tragics-a-tiny-audience-media-researcher-finds/
Having said that, it’s interesting to read speculation about Fairfax wanting to acquire Crikey today…
Mark,
Didn’t know it’s that big until you mentioned it. But FFS they are valuing this stuff at 5.25 times ad revenue. Forget profits, the new metric seems to be ad revenue!!!! Ad rev at 5.25 times!!!
Mel
You, Tim Lambert and a number of left-leaning figures who haven’t so far appeared on this thread (notably Jeremy Sear and Clive Hamilton) clearly have a very different fundamental attitude to free speech than my own. Although I’m not a libertarian on economic issues, I certainly am on free speech issues. I reckon anyone should be able to say anything they like without censorship as long as it isn’t seriously defamatory, grossly obscene and doesn’t possess a clear and serious tendency to provoke immediate and serious civil disorder (what US constitutional jurisprudence calls “fighting words”). I do not subscribe to the notion that something that someone labels “vilification” ought to be capable of prohibition unless it falls into one of the above very narrow categories, even if the language and ideas are very offensive, rude, ignorant, uncivil and just plain wrong to my mind and most other people. That doesn’t mean I deny myself the right to censor comment on my own blog that I regard as too uncivil and unpleasant for my personal comfort and what I regard as productive conversation with other reasonably mature adults. I suppose one might concede the same right to IBM and ANZ, but IMO they should be regarded as having some wider public duty partly because of their sheer size and their rent-seeking receipt of public largesse (that especially applies to ANZ).
You guys OTOH seem to believe that someone who wants to express ideas that you subjectively regard as being beyond the pale according to your own value system ought to be censored, and anyone who refuses to do so and allows or facilitates their words being published is fair game for retribution. I suppose it’s a legitimate political philosophical difference of opinion, and someone like David Irving certainly strains my libertarian tolerance. It ultimately depends on what one thinks is the proper balance between individual autonomy and social cohesion. Thus I’ll refrain from further debate on the point, because it would end up offending my own principles of civil discourse and be pointless in any event because we’re never going to convert each other to our respective viewpoints.
I don’t believe anything of the sort.
ANZ and IBM are or were your customers, buying ads from you. When they stopped, you responded by vilifying them and calling for them to be boycotted. That seems more than a little counter-productive — it seems that you are more likely to make them want to have nothing to do with advertising on blogs ever again. And also to make other companies, who have never advertised on blogs, less likely to start.
My own personal interest in this is that I have advertising on my blog and I would like it to continue and your campaign is likely to make advertisers think twice about getting involved with blogs.
Mark
I share your unease at the implications of taking the corporate shilling, especially given these events. For Troppo there’s the additional factor that it’s bugger-all money anyway, whereas LP gets quite a bit more traffic and therefore no doubt a lot more income. However in the “big picture” it’s still chicken-feed and certainly many orders of magnitude lower than Huffington Post. I have severe doubts that it’s worth the hassle and I think Nicholas and I need to discuss the question when he returns from his current o/s trip. We really don’t need the income anyway and have never spent any of it. It’s just accumulating very slowly in a bank account in the hope that we might think of something useful to do with it one day. Maybe we should use it to fund a blogosphere piss-up next time I’m in Melbourne and draw a line under the whole thing.
As for Kim’s post:
(a) I think the question of whether there’s an actionable secondary boycott is tricky and uncertain but I have no intention of being part of any such action anyway;
(b) I think it IS about free speech as my comments on this thread make clear;
(c) I think ANZ and IBM should be regarded as having some public ethical if not legal responsibility not to use their market position in an oppressive manner as they are doing here. I’m not sure that it should be a legally enforceable duty because that raises all sorts of thorny questions given the traditional legal basis of directors’ duties etc. However, regarding it as an ethical responsibility mostly sidesteps those questions.
(d) My attitude to Gregory Storer is summarised at #27 above.
(e) I don’t think OLO should be moderating its comment threads more aggressively, at least judged on the example of the Muehlenberg thread (I don’t typically read OLO threads so it’s the only example I can use). The comment to which Storer apparently objected (asserting from a fundie perspective that homosexuality is a “perversion”) is one I think is rather offensive but does actually express a fairly widespread christian perspective (as I’m sure you know from the Australian Catholic University campus). It’s no more extreme than dozens you’ll find on lots of blogs and MSM sites any day of the week.
I agree with Tim.
There don’t seem to me to be any cogent arguments for regarding the actions of ANZ and IBM as an attack on “free speech”. They’re not under any obligation to advertise where they don’t want to. I also very much doubt that bluster about their supposed sins and intimations about legal action, columns in The Australian and blog posts by Andrew Bolt decrying “political correctness”, etc, are going to do anything other than make them want to run a mile from the whole idea of placing ads on blogs.
Had I been Graham Young, as I said on LP, I might well have thought that approaching them in a conciliatory way to try to resolve the issue would have been a better way of proceeding. But I’m not. I doubt many of these blog posts are anything other than counter-productive in achieving the aims their authors claim to be seeking to advance.
I also think all this should make some people think again about moderation practices.
But Mark and Tim are probably right that this does not bode well for the cause of attracting advertising revenue for political blogs.
@34 – Ken, we crossed.
Obviously, we are not going to agree on the fundamentals of “free speech” and the rightness or otherwise of the conduct of the various players in all this.
But I would point out that Gregory Storer is not the sole yardstick of what is offensive. Unfortunately, I read the whole thread, and the endless recitation of a set of interlinked slurs which have been retailed as a package by notorious hater in the US Religious Right (“rimming”, false claims about health risks, etc, ad nauseam) are to me much more offensive, and as factually wrong and argumentatively worthless as Bill Muehlenberg’s original piece of tripe.
Tim
OK I understand where you’re coming from now. However it really underlines the concerns I just expressed at #34. This controversy brings into sharp relief the dilemmas and potential compromises that unavoidably flow from corporate sponsorship and advertising. One is creating an inherent conflict of interest between one’s belief in free speech and intellectual integrity on the one hand and one’s commercial interest in not antagonising a sponsor or advertiser.
I don’t want to be twee or naive about it. Anyone trying to publish as a business, even a part-time one, has no real choice but to submit to that dilemma and try to balance the competing imperatives on an ongoing basis. Troppo OTOH (and I think I speak for Nicholas as well at least to this extent) has no need at all to make money from advertising. We joined the Domain grouping mostly just because we were asked and didn’t see any compelling reason not to do so.
Penultimately, I certainly responded forthrightly to what is clearly a major organised boycott of OLO and inadvertently the Domain blogs as well (96% drop in ad revenue clearly means many more participants than just those two companies, and that doesn’t happen by sheer chance) by labelling it as such and indicating in strong language my own objections and intended response i.e.a personal boycott. I hope others follow suit but doubt that they will. And I have subsequently qualified my response by acknowledging that in one sense IBM and ANZ might be regarded as victims of what I certainly see as unacceptable intimidatory tactics, or at least as taking a weak-kneed expedient approach which sees their own immediate commercial risk as the only relevant factor.
I hope you continue to prosper from commercial advertising if you want to do so. Moreover, I doubt that you will suffer because others including OLO, myself and Helen Dale have been fairly strongly critical of the behaviour of these advertisers. However, if you DO end up suffering for it, perhaps it might be time to revisit some of the issues I’ve touched on above. Why do we blog? Does advertising render our efforts relevantly indistinguishable from the commercial media? And many other questions.
Kim
You might not have noticed that I indicated further up the thread that I had only read up to page 7 of the OLO Muehlenberg thread. I found nothing to that point that was sufficiently objectionable to provide rational justification for Storer’s actions. If later pages contained material of the sort you described (““rimming”, false claims about health risks, etc, ad nauseam”) my view might well be different.
You may note that I asked ringil to specify what comments he objected to given that I didn’t have time to read 22 pages of comment threads. Unfortunately he/she didn’t respond. That sort of material may well raise issues that suggest Graham needs to reconsider his moderation policies. They certainly sound like comments that we would delete from Troppo without too much agonising at all.
However, that in turn raises the thorny issue of to what extent blogs which have disparate political philosophies and commercial and other aspirations can productively collaborate for mutual advertising benefit. Do we need to have common moderation policies to avoid being tarred with someone else’s brush? etc etc. Is it all just too hard? Mind you, I think I’d tolerate it for even a substantial fraction of what Huffington Post is getting!!!
Ken: “You guys OTOH seem to believe that someone who wants to express ideas that you subjectively regard as being beyond the pale according to your own value system ought to be censored …”
Let me be clear, I certainly don’t think Muehlenberg’s strays into territory that should be illegal. Censorship is therefore not part of the equation. Let’s not verbal each other.
I also do not accept that ANZ and IBM have simply responded to bullying or made a simple economic calculation. Muehlenberg and his right-wing Christian lobby mates would, I think, have a vastly larger and more active base than that available to the gay lobby. Muehlenberg’s troops are already calling for a boycott against the ANZ and IBM. ANZ and IBM have much to lose and I suspect they new this from the outset.
I agree that ANZ and IBM have a “wider public duty” because of their size and power, but unlike you I think they have exercised it correctly. As I noted previously, about 100 gays have died as a result of hate crimes in NSW alone since 1980. What other Australian minority is murdered in such numbers on account of their minority status? None, I would think. Muehlenberg, and those like Young who provide him with a cloak of respectability, contribute to the atmosphere that causes such violence. ANZ and IBM have decided to disassociate themselves from this particular conservative death dance. They have rated the principles of life and the pursuit of happiness a little above the liberty of free speech in this particular instance. It sounds like a fair and reasonable judgment call to me. And in a free and open society, it is their call to make.
@38 – Me too re: HuffPo, Ken!
It is a bit of an ask to read that comments thread, though for anyone who might wish to, it’s easier to do so when you click “All”:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=11268&page=0
You may also be right that there are some issues raised by bundling together ideologically disparate blogs we might have to think about!
I don’t think, FWIW, that any of the people complaining realised that there would be an impact to anyone other than OLO.
What others said: this isn’t about free speech, but a flawed business model.
Yah. He also never said,
[…] Pearson’s Weekend Australian piece. I don’t want to rehash the arguments here, here, here or here. Rather I want to focus on something different. In the Pearson article we see this. […]
[…] Club Troppo […]
This would be a killer point if we were just talking about a primary boycott situation. Any person or corporation is entitled to purchase or not purchase goods or services from any other person and it would be a worry if it were otherwise. However we’re talking here about a potential organised secondary boycott which may breach the competition provisions of the TPA (I’ll keep calling it that for now because it’s quicker). According to Graham Young, a small group of gay activists has threatened, coerced or induced numerous corporate advertisers including IBM and ANZ into treating businesses they had been dealing with, including OLO and Troppo, in a manner different from what they otherwise would have done, and moreover one which almost by definition causes us loss and damage. In Troppo’s case the damage is slight and I doubt that the individuals concerned would be worth suing. Nevertheless, this may well be an unlawful secondary boycott under s45D despite legal and practical uncertainties discussed earlier (although I confused the issue at one point, I think).
Surely that would give you at least momentary pause for thought before leaping to this glib conclusion. The paradigm case of a 45D breach is a union picket designed to coerce people not to deal with an employer with whom unionists are in dispute. However the facts here appear to point towards a 45D breach even though suing on practical grounds seems rather pointless and probably counterproductive. Nevertheless it’s significant that, despite its anti-union origins, successive Labor governments have preserved 45D for the very good reason that permitting collusive, coercive and anti-competitive arrangements really is problematic.
The interesting thing from this discussion thread from my viewpoint at least is that we’ve probably teased out the viewpoints of all parties and it’s possible to have a degree of at least understanding for all of their positions:
– Troppo and the other blogs are entirely innocent uninvolved parties and in every sense collateral damage;
– At least judging by Kim from LP’s characterisation of sections of the Muehlenberg comment threads that I haven’t read, the gay activists including Gregory Storer might have had some cause for a degree of outrage at OLO’s moderation policies;
– OTOH Graham Young has simply observed a reasonably “hands off” moderation policy consistent with his classical liberal principles, and the overall conversation on this issue at OLO has been full and fair. It’s understandable that he sees OLO as having been unfairly singled out by zealots. My own tentative view in light of the nature of the comment threads as described by Kim is that the moderation policy really needs to be revisited;
– IBM and ANZ have certainly behaved in an expedient way with no regard to basic principles of fairness and free speech (not to mention the requirements of the TPA), but their concerns about possible commercial damage are understandable and on the predominant view of directors’ duties under corporations law they’re obliged to act in the company’s commercial interests rather than on any general notion of public good etc. Of course it’s equally possible that they could suffer commercial damage from the reactions of the fundie christians in light of the current situation. That may suggest that their acceding to the boycott in the first place was rather short-sighted and tha they might have been better advised on pragmatic grounds to decline to alter their advertising placement decisions. But that’s another question.
gt, what a hero you are, hiding behind you initials.
Its EXACTLY the same thing as the zionist lobby trying to wipe out the likes of Mearsheimer and Walts on Palestine.
Apart from being a silly season filler and vehicle for fund raising, there is not much can be said about this cowardly boycotting, EXCEPT AS, an attack on free speech.
The pitiful Muehlenberg thing was put up, made whatever point it wanted to make and was shot down by posters for it.
THAT’S the way to do it, not avoid discussion by shutting out contrary views on the basis of a personal and subjective unverified feeling as to what constitutes some sort of “hate speech”.
Get over yourselves!
3 posts now from Paul Walter saying it’s all the joos fault.
Are Club Troppo doing the annual Crikey group sub thing again this year?
Three posts now from righties saying its all paul walter’s fault.
No.
Liar.
That’s not what I said, go back and read my post, then write fifty times on the white board ,”I must not misrepresent what others say at a serious blog site”.
I agreee with what Fyodor and Yobbo have said here. The corporates aren’t the thugs not do they have an obligation to support anyone but they are cowards. The thugs are the gay lobby.
However Mel’s stuff about how more gays will kill themselves because of something on OLO is just ridiculous. And if Muehlenberg is so beyond the pale that Kim claims she would not have published him, why the heck did Croome basically agree to be published in the same book as him?
http://www.readings.com.au/news/why-vs-why-bill-muehlenberg-and-rodney-croome-debate-gay-marriage
The gay lobby haa become so strident and oversensitive nowadays. I used to be sympathetic to their cause but this and their ridiculous lawsuits and use of tribunals have put me off. Keep going like this, fellas.
jtfsoon:
“However Mel’s stuff about how more gays will kill themselves because of something on OLO is just ridiculous.”
Actually that isn’t what I said.