Kill the Messenger?

[Annie]

It probably won't work!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7872372/#050518a

Dirty tricks against the blogosphere?• May 18, 2005 | 7:03 PM ET

Over three years ago, I wrote:

I think they're doomed, technologically. But if Big Media let their position go without a fight to keep it by fair means or foul, they'll be the first example of a privileged group that did so. So beware.

It seems to me that the fighting may have started, though so far Big Media aren't the most important privileged group involved. (But see what happens in the wake of the Newsweek debacle.) Blogs and bloggers wield small but significant power, and they do so at the expense of established interests that wield much more power themselves. Now the empire seems to be striking back.

A while back, it was General Motors, sending thuggish security guys to threaten bloggers who published photos of the new Corvette before their official release:

A Texas computer consultant said he stumbled upon photos of a silver-blue Z06 on the Internet and posted them that afternoon on a Corvette online discussion forum he frequents. Five days later, on Nov. 14, two men from Securitas, GM's contract security firm, knocked on the door of his Houston home demanding to know who gave him the pictures. He said he refused to let them in, and their parting shot was, "We'll see you in court."

His response was to publish more, along with a report of the thuggish behavior that made GM look bad. And that's typically been the result of efforts to silence bloggers so far. Not everyone has learned, though, as Apple's efforts to silence unwelcome speech illustrate:

Apple recently alarmed those who treasure free speech when it took aggressive legal steps against bloggers who leaked new product details -- acting a bit like the Big Brother Apple used to proudly proclaim it wasn't. The company also pulled John Wiley & Sons' books out of its stores after the tech publisher printed an unauthorized biography titled "iCon Steve Jobs." Not cool.

Nope, not cool. And it produced more bad publicity than it prevented, as such efforts often do. (Apple even wound up with Big Media outfits weighing in in support of the bloggers, which can't be good. Full disclosure: I've joined in this Stanford brief in support of the bloggers, myself.) But the most outrageous anti-blogger behavior involved the GrokLaw blog, and wound up getting reporter Maureen O'Gara, along with some other employess of LinuxWorld magazine, put out of work for publishing all sorts of personal information regarding GrokLaw's semi-anonymous blogger, publication that seems to have been inspired by hostility about what the blog was reporting.

I think that we'll see more things like this in the future. But so far these assaults on bloggers have one common theme: They were miserable failures. What's more, not only did they fail, they also generated a considerable amount of PR blowback -- enough so that at least one tech columnist is suggesting a boycott of LinuxWorld's publisher and advertiser.

Instead of going after bloggers, I suggest that businesses in and out of the media consider a different approach: Try telling the truth, and dealing honestly with critics. Hey, it just might work.