Sour Alba

Ah, what a tangled web we we weave when we practise to write silly season stories about things we know little about.

A key danger of being a journalist is writing about a topic when sections of your audience know far more about it than you. This danger is multiplied when you’re flamming up a total non-story.

Sun and Mail hackette Julie Moult knows all about this after scribbling up some desperate nonsense about a photoshopped image of a politician. (Incidentally, the paper used the image without permission despite repeated request by the creator to stop lifting his work). She made several basic errors in the piece - such as describing what had happened as Googlebombing. (My favourite is the fact-box that says the practice of Googlebombing began in the “early 1990s” - a good trick as the Google.com domain was not registered until 1997.)

Once people who spotted the glaring holes in such alleged stories could be safely ignored. If they complained they could be dismissed as geeks or green inkies. Now, however, we are all publishers and we all have a say.

Thus, SEO expert Tim Ireland has been able to post his response to Ms Moult’s piece online, offering an almost line-by-line analysis of its shortcomings.

He has done more, much more. He has begun a campaign to spread the word that “Julie Moult is an idiot” by harnessing the blogosphere. He has written a piece called, snappily, “Julie Moult is an idiot” and seeks to demonstrate the processes she misunderstood by inviting readers to take part in:

=========== THE JULIE MOULT IMAGE CHALLENGE ==============

Step One - Create an image featuring the words “Julie Moult is an idiot” (or “Julie Moult is not an idiot, but instead a much-misunderstood campaigner for truth and a very nice person once you get to know her”).

Step Two - Include the words ‘julie’ and ‘moult’ in the filename for your image.

Step Three - Publish it on your website or weblog in a post explaining what it is and why it’s there (including, if you like, these steps and a link back to this article).

Step Four (optional) - If you really mean business, put her name in your article title and maybe even drop in some ‘ALT’ or ‘Title’ goodness for your image.

His scheme has caught on and now the number one Google result for a search on “Julie Moult” is his “Julie Moult is an idiot” post. An image search on her name throws up many disparate pictures sharing only one thing: the description “Julie Moult is an idiot“.

Now, I’m no fan of the Daily “Hurrah for the Blackshirts” Mail. And anyone who’s ever been tempted to believe its crap about immigration should take a moment to look at how it handled the not-too-complx facts in the Blears Google story.

But Julie Moult is not alone in writing about something she does not appear to understand. For Tim Ireland himself could be accused of misunderstanding the press.

He displays the common naive belief that the reporter whose name appears above a story has anything to do with the thing itself.

There are many people who could be to blame. A sub may have dropped “Googlebomb” into the story because they vaguely remembered it being internet jape-related. A news editor may have told her in no uncertain terms that the editor wanted it to be a story about Googlebombing so that’s what it was going to be. And in the happy, relaxed workplace that is the Mail, there wouldn’t be too much gentle debate about terminology.

Also, Ireland has overlooked that a journalist’s job is to be an intermediary, explaining a complex issue in a simple way. (Actually having written that I weep for the state of British journalism.) Technically, the Blears non-story may not have been about a Googlebomb but how many people (editors included) would really get the difference between that and astroturfing or sock-puppeting.

That said, the story is complete mince from start to sorry finish. Unmitigated ackamarackus.

Finally, while the Mail is a vile publication*, many bloggers make a mistake when they assume that its journos are also vile. This is based on another naive belief: that tabloid hacks are evil and broadsheet scribblers are saints. Anyone who has worked on both kinds of paper knows this is cobblers.

Despite these caveats, Ireland is right to shoot down Moult’s story. I doubt the Mail are listening though. There are no comments on the article, which is surprising as its errors are the talk of the web. I myself posted such a comment but, mysteriously, at time of writing it has not appeared.

*Why I think the Mail is vile. In August 1938 it printed this editorial: “The way stateless Jews from Germany are pouring in from every port of this country is becoming an outrage. The number of aliens entering the country through the back door ­ a problem to which the Daily Mail has repeatedly pointed.” For more current Mail vileness I recommend a read of The Enemies of Reason.