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Eliot Javdan, class of 2002, was the stand-up guy secretly behind the website pushing the home phone, address and email and even satellite photo of the house where Kobe Bryant's alleged victim can be contacted, writes Mark Glaser at OJR. Glaser had to find Javdan using the Internet registry and some digging because the blogger opted to remain anonymous. To his credit, Javdan pulled the private contact data off his site (but left up links) after the woman reported getting death threats, Glaser says.
The column explores the ethical controversies that have heated up around the Bryant case, including today's essay by former Washington Post ombudsman Geneva Overholser arguing it's time the media name the victims in sex crime cases. In his piece, Glaser quotes me and serial L.A. Observed commenter Luke Ford, among others. It's a good overview (and I also recommend Glaser's last OJR column on journalists who rely too much on the Net), but I have one nit to pick.
When Mark wrote that I'm locked in a heated debate with Ford, I looked to my left, then my right, and thought: who me? In a post here I tweaked Ford and others for their personal ethics in linking to the woman's email, address and other personal data, and I scoffed at his claim that he was acting in response to 30 years of feminist media. But I posted maybe five comments in the long thread, and one of them announced my early and I thought gracious exit from the blather. That didn't stop Ford from wanking away in that thread and another where he fantasized some Fordian nonsense about me. Debate? Uh-uh. As I told Glaser, you don't debate with fanatics on the Internet. Ford was being given his due -- which is to say, he was being ignored, by me and by some others.
I've still taken no position on the big questions being bandied about in the Bryant case -- how to balance the rights and privacy of the accused and accuser, how the media should handle rape cases and celebrity cases, etc. I've only caught the news sporadically, and I've posted on it very little. My sole entry point into the the fray has been narrow and specific -- in my opinion it was a low-class act of disrespect to circulate the woman's home address, phone and email, so I said so.