A prime example of how not to be a professional journalist.

[Neo Neko]

I thought about posting this in the Linux section as that would be where it is most topical. But I figure most there would already be aware of this issue. And that further that non-Linux users might like to know or benefit from this information.

If you ever need Linux news or information. Or information of any kind for that matter. Never trust Linux Business News formerly Linux Business Week. The standards there have dropped to such deplorable levels that they make publishers of openly fictional junk tabloids look like paragons of virtue and truth.

Maureen O'Gara has shown herself to be not only a bad journalist but an all-round bad person and unscroupulous shill for hire. Saturday May 7th Ms. O'Gara published a factually incorrect public slander piece about a private individual. Namely Pamela Jones of groklaw fame. Real journalists will not publish anything more than a name even for suspected criminals. Ms. O'Gara took it upon herself to "try" and stalk Pamela and publish her private address on a public business website. Unfortunatly as a stalker Ms. O'Gara is as much a failure as she is at being a reporter. I say unfortunatly because the address she published was not that of Pamela Jones but her mother. A totally un-involved 3rd party. Apparently Ms. O'Gara "reportedly" a professional journalist, is jealous that Pamela Jones a paralegal turned journalist is a better journalist.

I would post a link to the offensive site. But I will not out of principle. I assume that most regulars here can get to the front page of the afforementioned offensive site without hand holding. For those of you who have missed all this SCO Vs. IBM action head over to Groklaw.net to get the straight story and show your support. It couldn't be much more dramatic etc if it were a made for TV drama.

[Mug Funky]

wow, i can see why you're so pissed off.

this is not just bad journalism (there is NO story there. nothing at all), but it's self-indulgent and flagrantly illegal.

[video_magic]

:eek: that article is indeed nothing more than a trashy, personal attack masquerading as a news story. Standards have really dropped :eek: . I was embarrassed just reading it.

[NobbyNobbs]

I have been following the SCO vs IBM case on Groklaw, and must say that PJ, unlike MOG always publishes her sources ( court documents, etc.-) and even if she have an open source agenda, she let people make up their own minds based on the evidence, so I could not care less if MOG's rant about PJ being a 61 year old Yehovas Witness is true or not.
( I'm pretty sure that the old woman MOG found is not the real PJ's mom :-)

[Neo Neko]

@Nobby
You are exactly right. Even if she worshiped satan it would not have any bearing on what she has reported. Because everything she has reported is a matter of public fact. Something that if any of us spent the time to obtain, could obtain.

Unfortunatly Groklaw appears to be down at the moment. Database issues. Could it be that in the wake of the news (http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/05/05/10/1653207.shtml?tid=149&tid=106) that Ms. O'Gara has been let go that her handlers have taken up a DOS attack to keep people from finding the truth. Or are people just flooding the site to show their support. :p

[NobbyNobbs]

I've got the first page up, in her latest article about MoG getting the boot, she asks people to stop posting comments on yesterday's article, as it seems that the software can't handle more than 1 181 replies, and the count shows 1203 replies at the moment, so probably both well wishers & software problems & slashdotting ;)

[shevegen]

To be honest, even the SCO vs IBM case has not interested me much.

[markrb]

Entire Senior Editorial Staff of LinuxWorld Resigns
Saturday, May 14 2005 @ 10:45 AM EDT

Senior Editorial Staff of LinuxWorld Magazine Announce Resignations

MONTVALE, New Jersey, May 14 th, 2005 --- The entire senior editorial staff of LinuxWorld Magazine has today announced that they will be leaving the magazine, effective immediately.

The following statement was released by the group. “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.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: James Turner
turner at blackbear.com
603-552-2020

Dee-Ann LeBlanc
dee at renaissoft.com
(604) 898-8433

I wonder what happened since the company did what they asked and they said they were happy with the choice? Not informed on this really, but just what I have read on the site.

Mark

[Mug Funky]

wow! that's mad.

maybe this sort of thing is going on all the time, but the o'gara article was the last straw?

a move like that is rare anywhere, so it's obvious there's some major dissatisfaction at linuxworld.

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by markrb
I wonder what happened since the company did what they asked and they said they were happy with the choice? Not informed on this really, but just what I have read on the site.

Mark

Happy to oblige (http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/free_issues/pills/fuat_kircaali_interview/).

If your CEO is unapologetic after being caught red handed authorising syndicated publication of a piece that breaks many well established codes of journalistic ethics. Well this is what you get. Basically his apology was as unapologetic as you get.

I must say however that I am mightily impressed. I can't say whether their senior editor positions on such a site earned them much. But really that doesn't mean much in the long run. The action is still astounding. Had it been their main source of income it would have just made it practically unbelievable. At any rate this just really has me floored. Wherever these two go I will likely follow. Such integrity these days is rare it seems. And should be cherrished.

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by Mug Funky
wow! that's mad.

maybe this sort of thing is going on all the time, but the o'gara article was the last straw?

a move like that is rare anywhere, so it's obvious there's some major dissatisfaction at linuxworld.

O'Gara was/is pushing the envelope of ethics and good taste all the time. If SCO had a catastrophy in the court she would somehow spin her story with SCO the victor of the day. Not only that, there appear to be close ties between O'Gara and SCO making her ability to objectively report on issues involving SCO questionable at best.

This has happened many times in the past. And indeed from SCO's Q1 conference call they said they had PIs investigating who PJ is. And they they were "close" to finding out. Magically a few weeks later the information miraculously falls in O'Gara's lap. Why? Because SCO didn't find anything they could use. Or at least use legally. So they handed it off to someone who would use it in proxy for them. Enter the scapegoat. O'Gara's story was not so much a story as it was a thinly veiled threat. "We know who you are, and where you and your family live!" This in a case that has already seen two "suicides" taking place under "questionable" conditions. Well it is almost equivalent to a death threat!

I must admit that the SCO Vs. IBM case is not that interesting or engaging. It is however quite good for a laugh how on almost a daily basis SCO and their representatives seemingly get caught with their pants down. The real interesting story is how groklaw collects and anylizes all this stuff. And the response of people like SCO and O'Gara. You would be lucky to write TV dramas as engaging!

[NobbyNobbs]

It must be tough on the 61 year old woman O'Gara "outed" as PJ to have her personal details, including adress & telephon numbers published like this only because her name is Pamela Jones !
The fact that this Fuad caracter finally have apologised to PJ on his site, don't mean much, when you have seen the interview with him.:devil:

[Wilbert]

I wonder what happened since the company did what they asked and they said they were happy with the choice? Not informed on this really, but just what I have read on the site.
The publisher (Fuat Kircaali) gave a statement in an online interview [1] that he removed her article because of the DDoS attacks against Sys-Con. From the interview:


The reason why we decided to pull it was that when the content, style and the language of the story was perceived as offensive by a group of the readers, a denial-of-service attack was launched against our entire company, interfering with all of our publications and all of our readers. (...) We lost thousands of dollars in revenues during the past three days. We are trying to recover from the biggest cyber attack in history any media company was ever subject to!

He also said that in his opinion there was nothing wrong (or unethical) with the article:


The language of the story is in the typical style of Ms. O’Gara, generally entertaining and easy to read, and sometimes it could be regarded as offensive, depending on how you look at it. I decided to publish the article. It was published because it was an accurate news story. (...) As I mentioned above, if we thought there was anything wrong with this story factually, professionally, ethically, or legally speaking, we would not have run it in the first place.

That's why the Senior Editorial Staff of LinuxWorld resigned [2].

Apperently F. Kircaali changed his mind after the resignation, see the update in [1,3]:

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
How this is consistent with his online interview is beyond me.


[1] http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/free_issues/pills/fuat_kircaali_interview/
[2] http://dee.linuxworld.com/
[3] http://www.linuxbusinessnews.com/
[4] http://www.braingia.org/webnotes/index.php?title=on_linuxworld_com_dos_again&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1#comments info about the "possible" DDoS attack.

[Wilbert]

Interesting quote from groklaw


I don't think this is over, folks.

The former Senior Editor at LinuxWorld, Turner, says on his blog that he was called by a Forbes (or was it Fortune - don't have the blog page in front of me) writer named Lyons (IIRC) who asked a LOT of really weird questions about PJ that were clearly biased against PJ and for MoG.

Turner's take is that this guy will be writing a Forbes piece and Turner wanted to put his responses online first so any quotes the guy takes out of context will be obvious.

It's beginning to look to me that a lot of this - SCO gets investments on Microsoft's advice, Darl attacks PJ, MoG attacks PJ, Fuat attacks OSS people for a DDoS, now some bozo at Forbes attacks PJ - may well be an orchestrated attack on PJ and, more importantly, by extension OSS.

And we know only two companies who are at the forefront of anti-OSS propaganda.

Stay tuned.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050514104521978