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Campaign against Julie Moult 'smacks of bullying', says Mail Online

Posted: 05/09/08 By: Judith Townend
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A widespread internet campaign against one of the Daily Mail's reporters 'smacks of bullying', according to the editorial director of its website.

The campaign to alter the Google search result for Daily Mail reporter Julie Moult's name was launched by blogger Tim Ireland after his online comment on an article by Moult from August 22 was not published.

Moult's original article, 'Blears falls prey to 'Google Bomb' Attack Of The 50-inch Woman' described an alleged Googlebomb attack on Government minister Hazel Blears.

Ireland or 'Manic', believed there were inaccuracies in Moult's article of August 22 - which he details on his website, bloggerheads.com - and set out to correct these in his comment four days later on August 26.

"What you describe here is not a Googlebomb, but what Google regards to be a relevant image result. Google themselves told you that, but you didn't listen," he wrote.

On Friday the original article still read: 'No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts?', as the screen grab below shows. Screenshot of Mail Online article

By Friday evening, however, after Journalism.co.uk spoke to to Martin Clarke, editorial director of Mail Online, Ireland's original comment was published beneath the article with its time and date stamp of August 26.

After Ireland's comment initially failed to appear he launched a campaign to go 'on the record' to demonstrate that 'Julie Moult is an idiot', he said in a blog post.

In the past few days, online activity has led to a Google search for 'Julie Moult' returning results relating to 'Julie Moult is an Idiot'. Similar results are also returned in Google Images and a YouTube video relating to Ireland's campaign had received 810 views at the time of writing.

Speaking to Journalism.co.uk today, Clarke said the comments on the article in question were not published, because the story was already a few days old, and this was not an act of censorship.

Users should use the feedback button on the site, which sends requests directly to Clarke, to complain about a story, he added.

"If you want to complain about a story some days after it's published you have to take a more traditional view of things and write to the editor, the same as you would as if it was in the paper. We don't publish all the letters we get," he said.

Clarke confirmed that 60 comments had been made on the article, but these remained unpublished as of Friday afternoon - until Ireland's original post was set live.

'[I]n an ideal world we'd get every [non-libellous and inoffensive] comment published', but 'it's a hell of a job moderating 7,100 comments every day', he said.

"We are reviewing our entire moderation policy. This is becoming more and more of an issue for us. We get more comments than we can possibly deal with and our moderation side hasn't been able to keep up."

"We're not into censoring comments - if that comment had been posted on the day or even the day after we would have probably got it up there."

Martin Belam, an internet consultant, also blogged about the Mail Online's editorial policy when one of his comments was edited on a separate article in February last year. His original comment has now been published.

Clarke said that he did not know of a printed policy detailing their editorial control of comments, but that they had now stopped editing comments, as occurred in Belam's case.

Speaking to Journalism.co.uk, Ireland was keen to stress that his campaign against Moult was not a Googlebomb, rather a demonstration to Mail Online of how Google can be simply manipulated by 'producing relevant material that strikes a chord with the public'.

A Googlebomb is the successful manipulation of the search engine to show an 'irrelevant' result, as a prank. One very successful example, before it was removed by Google, involved typing the phrase 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' into the Google search engine, which then brought up a spoof error page.

Very few, if any, Googlebombs still survive after Google became aware of the attacks. A blog written in January 2007 describes how members of the company 'got together and came up with an algorithm that minimizes the impact of many Googlebombs'.

However, media commentators have warned that targetting a particular journalist with an online campaign could be counterproductive.

"It's a little unfair to pick on a reporter when there are a number of links in the production chain," Adrian Monck, professor of journalism at City University and blogger told Journalism.co.uk. The campaign against Moult, he added, showed how bloggers could influence search engines: "it's an extreme example of readers as Google search publishers," he said.

Paul Bradshaw, a journalism lecturer at Birmingham City University, who has blogged about the incident and also failed to have comments published on the Mail's website, said: "It's a classic example of thinking that 300 people, who don't know anything about the web, can win against 3000 people, who very much do. It's clear who's going to win."

Belam also voiced concerns that if bloggers and online users victimise one journalist they could 'end up looking like mad bag ladies'.

He told Journalism.co.uk that a 'big fuss that will probably only last for a week [on the web] will not affect the readership'. While he is impressed with Mail Online's recent redesign, he insisted the site needs 'openness and engagement' if it is going to invite comments from readers.

The reaction within the blogosphere was in fact a 'penalty of success' for Mail Online after its recent growth in traffic, Clarke said.

When asked if Mail Online would be taking any action against the campaign, Clarke said there was little the title could do, adding "It's a free country isn't it?"

According to Ireland, the campaign against Moult could have grown bigger, but instead he is working with other web users to develop another project to bring newspapers to account online.

This week's attack is not the first time opponents of the Mail have used the web to publicise their views. The website Daily Mail Watch was set up to document the content of the title's articles, while several Facebook groups have been founded berating the paper's journalism, with the most popular attracting 11,824 members at the time of writing.

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