Jill Carroll Was Falsely Accused by Some Bloggers

Posted on April 11, 2006

A few right wing bloggers gave kidnapped Christian Science Monitor journalist Jill Carroll an unbelievably hard time over her kidnapping. These bloggers accused her of being a traitor and an America hater. In the end it turned out that Carroll was forced by her captives to make the propaganda tape in exchange for her release. The CS Monitor has a Jill Carroll update blog that provides information about her rescue and her return to the U.S. Ellen Goodman, a syndicated columnist, recently wrote that these bloggers owe Carroll an apology.

The printouts on my desk describe the 28-year-old journalist, a hostage and victim for 82 terrifying days, as something between Patty Hearst and Baghdad Jane, between a traitor and ''Princess Jill." TBone posted a potshot, calling Carroll ''a liar" and the kidnapping ''a total scam." PA Pundits said that ''I still just can't get past her being (for the most part) unharmed." And Debbie Schlussel called her a ''spoiled brat America-hater."
The blogosphere was not the only source of pollution. Indeed, the oil-spill prize goes to Don Imus's producer, Bernard McGuirk, who described this young reporter as ''the kind of woman who would wear one of those suicide vests. . . . She may be carrying Habib's baby." But in the short, volatile, and powerful life of the Web log, the Jill Carroll debacle may be a turning point.
Web logs have been around barely a half-dozen years. The Pew Internet & American Life Project estimates that a quarter of Internet users now read blogs and 9 percent write one. Most of the 28 million blogs are online diaries such as those on MySpace. But there is also the feisty political corner of this zone.
The political bloggers first flexed their muscle in 2002 when they trumped the MSM -- blogspeak for Mainstream Media -- by forcing Trent Lott out of the Senate speakership after he toasted the good old segregated days of Strom Thurmond. In 2004, they proved the power of the Internet as a great equalizer when they confronted the house of CBS and Dan Rather over Bush's military records.
Two years later, we have -- ready, fire, aim -- the Jill Carroll affair. These attacks raise the question of what bloggery is going to be when it grows up. An Internet op-ed page? Or a polarized, talk-radio food fight?

The question is why did these bloggers believe the propaganda tape in the first place? Why weren't they patient enough to wait for Jill Carroll's side of the story? Can these bloggers really expect to continue to have a readership beyond this incident? There were also right wing bloggers who gave Carroll the benefit of the doubt and waited for her story and there are many bloggers that remained supportive of Carroll. Right Wing Nut House has an insightful post about bloggers tendency to jump the gun on stories. Jumping the gun happens in all varieties of blogging, not just political blogs.

In people's haste to be first, or different, or just plain ornery and contrary (all the better to get links and readers) a culture of "shoot first and ask questions later" has arisen in the blogosphere that quite frankly, is proving every bad thing that the MSM has been saying about blogs from the beginning. Many of us - including myself - have been guilty in the past of hitting that "Publish" button when perhaps it would have been prudent and proper to take a beat or two to think about what we just wrote and the impact it might have beyond the small little world we inhabit in this corner of Blogland.

The Moderate Voice, which provides a in-depth article on this story, says a few of the bloggers that prejudged Carroll have apologized.