Free Software Mag Interviews Sys-Con Publisher

NW writes "Tony Mobily, editor of the Free Software Magazine recently interviewed Fuat Kircaali, founder and publisher of Sys-Con Media. The interview revolves around the recent controversy surrounding the article written by Maureen O'Gara attacking Pamela Jones of GrokLaw."

Re:A Chilling Effect

[Anonymous Coward]

An opinion piece is something that lists the name of her mother (not PJ) and also gives a street address along with pictures of the outside of where she lives? Get real.

O'Gara's piece was an attempt at a smear job by painting PJ as a crazy elderly Jehovah's Witness. Those in the SCO camp/pro-SCO people must be incredibly desperate to be resorting to tactics like that.

He still doesn't get it

[Locke2005]

If somebody published an article with names and addresses of my family members, as well as a description of my car and the inside of my apartment, I would certainly interpret that as a threat, just like the old "We know where you live!" cliche. In fact, I would attempt to have the author and publisher charged with a hate crime, since I am in a bi-racial marriage, which people have been killed for in the past! There is a thin line between free speech and threatening speech; Moron O'Gara crossed it.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Not much for an apology

[heli_flyer]

From reading the article, apparently it's not the complaints from the readers, nor the complaints from the advertisers which prompted him to pull the articles. The only reason he pulled the article is the DDOS attacks. He still doesn't seem to understand what he did wrong.

What an ass

[instantkarma1]

To paraphrase..."There was nothing ethically or morally wrong with the story. It was factual. However, many of our idiot readers.....errr..customers, got their panties in a was about it. I see no problem publishing personal attacks against people, including their physical address and making fun of their religion, but I'll be damned if some of our readers aren't prudes."

This guy is absolutely classless. I think I'll pass on anything put out by them in the future.

MOG did not know it was the *right* PJ

[One Louder]

Even in the "article" itself MOG admits that she didn't know for sure if she had tracked down the actual PJ, and even implied that this "Pamela Jones" might have been the victim of identity theft.

Given that, why plaster the address and pictures of a potentially innocent party across the Internet?

What about the mother? She's not a party to Groklaw in any way, she's not a blogger, a reporter, or anything, yet her address and pictures of her house ended up in the "article".

I'm sorry - I see nothing ethical here.

Re:A Chilling Effect

[gvc]

Here's the Letter to Readers [sys-con.com] by LinuxWorld detailing the standards of journalism that O'Gara contravened.

Among them stereotyping by race, gender, age, religion, ethnicity, geography, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, or social status.

legal issues, as always

[fred fleenblat]

People should keep in mind that Mr. Kircaali really doesn't have the option of fully admitting and apologizing for anything. That would just open up him and his company to a giant lawsuit.

He has to forcefully deny any wrongdoing to remove the possibility that at a later trial, a lawyer could just just hand the apology/admission to a jury and say "Here's the evidence, he admitted to it, please make them give PJ $1 (holds pinky to lip) MILLION dollars"

Re:Montreal?

[Montreal!!hahahahaha]

My advice to you, my young "canadian" friend, is to watch some South Park.
Montreal?
muahahahahahaha

Re:I thought Slashdot was against hate crimes...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, the moment it leaves your brain its no longer a "thought" crime.

The purpose of "hate crime" laws should be simply to establish motive. Turning a "sorry, I didn't mean to burn that cross in your yard" case into a "damn, I shoula tied you to it!" case.

Re:Interview summary:

[ameoba]

I think it's more like "I don't really care what anyone thinks as long as we're making money on it".

Must be a Republican.

Re:Not much for an apology

[brennz]

Mr. Kircaali is *FULL OF IT*. I have several emails from his advertisers expressing their discontent with the content of MOG's attacks on PJ He is tap-dancing, to make himself the victim. Instead, he should be looked at the kid in the corner wearing the dunce cap, obviously for making disruptions.

Re:A Chilling Effect

[Anonymous Coward]

60 Minutes does this kind of thing all the time. It's not illegal. Its not even immoral journalism, if there's a story there.

OGara tried to figure out if there was an IBM-PJ connection, failed and published a fluff piece about PJ's car anyway. That's just crap journalism and a shitty thing to do.

As for PJ, her little internet soapbox made here a "public figure" and now she learns this has real world consequences. She basically started this nasty bitchfight with OGara, no suprise that someone bothered figuring out where she lived. (Just as groklawers did with McBride's home address and phone number.)

Shameful

[ChaosDiscord]

So the publisher admits that he pulled the article not because it was ethical, but because he was being DOSed. So they first lack the ethics to realize that publishing someone's home address and the address of their elderly mother is wrong, then bend over when attacked. That's shameful. This publisher has shown that he fundamentally does not get it. I strongly support his first amendment right to publish that article, but he's still a sleazebag. I'll be avoiding the entire SysCon family of magazines as I can't trust them to do good journalism.

Re:I thought Slashdot was against hate crimes...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I used to disagree with "hate crime" laws but then I realized their point. Yes, most people don't commit violent crime because they love their victim. But that's not the point.

The purpose of Federal hate crime legislation is to give the Federal government authority to go in and investigate should the local enforcement NOT do his/her job because said prosecutor, police and justice agrees with the crime because they too hold those prejudices. There are places where a crime against blacks or gays might not be thought of as a biggie and swept under the rug. In most cases, I wouldn't like encroachment of federal power, but it IS a human rights issue and at this point, the local justice system would be broken so someone needs to step in.

Big time.

[khasim]

From TFA:

The "editorial board members" of LinuxWorld are appointed from among the leading professionals and participants of the Linux community at large.

Well, that's just sweet. But what does it have to do with anything?

LinuxWorld's independent advisory board and the core editorial team(s) have full editorial decision-making authority in everything that goes to print.

But MOG doesn't appear in print. Her articles are posted on your web site.

So what does anything about "print" have to do with this story?

They funnel that passion into the accurate and unbiased editorial content that you look for in the pages of our magazine(s) every month and in every new issue.

Still, not in print so why are you talking about this?

We believe that a magazine such as LinuxWorld, supported by hands-on participants and leading industry experts, offers real-life editorial content that you will not find elsewhere.

Hey! I can write this "note" and try to turn it into a free ad for my wonderful magazine.

Our compensation and deep satisfaction is in knowing that we are providing a valuable service that benefits Open Source, Linux, and everyone in the industry.

Yep. If I ever need to find PJ's mom, I'll know the site that provides that "valuable service".

This is how LinuxWorld differentiates itself from other venues.

Yep. Linux Journal certainly wouldn't publish that, even on its web site. Nor any other technical publication.

On the pages of LinuxWorld you read articles written by the most knowledgeable and experienced professionals in the world.

Did I mention the part about turning this into a free ad?

Last but not least, we are pleased to announce that with the launch of our new Web site, we now made all our archived content and past issues available online.

Thanks for having me on the show, did I mention my new web site? Can I do a quick plug for it?

Please be sure to take a look at the "LinuxWorld Topics" section of our new Web site to explore our archived content grouped under a rich number of categories.

I'm real sure I mentioned the free ad time. Right?

Before I end my note, I would like to take this opportunity to share with you our publishing guidelines.

End your note? You haven't even gotten to the subject.

We believe in the Golden Rule.

Give us the gold and you make the rules.

In all our dealings we strive to be friendly and courteous, as well as fair and compassionate.

This was not a single article. Read the past ones. You'll see an ongoing stream of hatred.

But those were okay to put on your sites.

We treat sources, subjects, and colleagues as human beings deserving of respect. We show compassion, show good taste, and avoid pandering to lurid curiosity.

Hmmmm..... You might need to check this page then - http://linuxbusinessnews.sys-con.com/read/49228.ht m?CFID=39636&CFTOKEN=75BBE516-14D5-139B-BC4011A448 3558B3 [sys-con.com]

Yep, Linux Business News on the sys-con.com site. And if I may post some of the hate there:

Whatever you think of his politics, McBride may have a point or two. How come such an influence peddler is so mysterious?

So, PJ is "mysterious".

The name PJ is apparently a nom de plume or, in this case maybe it's a nom de guerre.

Maybe it stands for "Pam Jones".

Re:A Chilling Effect

[bernywork]

No, not quite, 60 Minutes doesn't turn around and say at 110 something street, you will find this. That's the boundary that got crossed, if they said "In this apartment block in downtown Missouri" or whatever it was, that wouldn't be going to far. To publish the information on the internet of someone who obviously wanted to keep their personal life out of what they do professionaly, that's the step too far.

Also the information was unverified. The whole thing to me sounds like a smear story, no matter which way you look at it.

Re:A Chilling Effect

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't say 110 Something Street nowdays, but 15 years ago they would park right in someone's front yard and tell you exactly where it was.

It was a smear story. However, (hypothetically) if O'Gara had found IBM pay stubs all over PJ's desk, then it would have been legitimate journalism. Therefore stalking her house was a legitimate journalistic tactic.

OK I changed my mind back again........

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

Here I was ready to give Sys-Con the benefit of the doubt since they fire MOG but fuck it! This interview only proves that they aren't sorry, they do NOT see the err of MOGs ways.

If MOGs story WERE legitimate and they fired MOG not because of her story but because of it's unpopularity then that too would be mucho unethical.

Throw Sys-Con and it's publications into your meat/cyber space equivalent of a kill file.

Re:Not much for an apology

[HorsePunchKid]

Exactly. It's not an apology at all. It's like running over someone in a crosswalk and then saying, "I'm sorry you didn't get out of the way quickly enough." Fuat Kircaali does not believe even in the slightest that there was anything ethically questionable about the article, or he wouldn't have run it.

Pathetic. Anything for some extra traffic, I guess. They certainly got more hits from me than they ever have in the past. At the expense of never getting any more in the future, though. I hope it was worth it, Fuat!

Re:Huh? Does this man use his own dictionary?

[rhizome]

Sorry to inform you, but nobody gives a flying fuck about Mareeen O'Gara or SysCon except Pamala Jones and her thralls. (As evidenced about the 100s of groklaw articles published about those noname losers.)

Yeah, dude. Obviously.

And a lot of those fuckos feel seriously wronged and may not have one's normal moral boundries in place.

I suppose you'd like us to adopt the moral compass of an anonymous poster with a chip on their shoulder? Way to go, champ.

Re:Interview summary:

[Anonymous Coward]

the story was perceived as offensive by a group of the readers

I'll never purchase any publication by them again. Doesn't sound like there's much understanding there about the difference between right and wrong. Instead of a believable apology, we're presented with weasel-words.

That's how publishing tends to work

[PCM2]

In the trade press, and probably even newspapers though I have no firsthand experience there, you generally have two arms of the company, which we might call "church" and "state."

"Church" is the editorial department. The head of an editorial department is the editor-in-chief.

"State" is the publishing side. This is where all the marketing, advertising, sales type stuff happens. The head of the publishing side of the business is the publisher. Typically the publisher does not get a direct say in what goes into the magazine. He can object, but what the editor-in-chief says goes. In a well-run operation, the publisher might get a lot of say in what goes on the front cover of a magazine (because you can consider the cover a marketing vehicle as much as it is an editorial one) but that's about where it ends.

The role of CEO is trickier. Doubtless this is a business position. Probably the role of the CEO has more to do with preserving a brand identity for the book through its editorial content. The CEO is probably not all that involved in the day-to-day operations of choosing which articles to publish and which not to publish. He probably does get some say in the matter, though; so, if there's a problem, he probably goes and yells at the editor-in-chief at 4pm on a Friday afternoon and everybody needs to bust ass over the weekend to fix things.

Anyway -- in a well-run publishing outfit that has not compromised its journalistic integrity, the "church" and "state" sides are separate (which is why people tend to call them that). And to tell you the truth, I have no reason to believe this isn't how it is at Sys-Con.

When O'Gara's article was published, who raised the stink? The editor-in-chief of LinuxWorld. Sounds good so far; it's his job to meddle in content. But how did it get published in the first place? Because the editor-in-chief of LinuxWorld doesn't have oversight over it. If O'Gara's content was published as part of a normal publishing structure, perhaps he would. But apparently, according to what Mr. Kircaali says, it is Maureen O'Gara who has oversight over what she publishes. Sys-Con merely "syndicates" it, meaning she basically gets a rubber stamp from Kircaali and nobody even bothers to read it. And I quote:

Maureen does not act directly on behalf of SYS-CON or anyone else. She is the owner of her own company, G2 Computer Intelligence. She is not a staff reporter of SYS-CON. We have been syndicating her LinuxGram newsletter for more than three years. ... We do not make decisions on behalf of Ms. O'Gara. I'm not her boss.

So, to Mr. Kircaali: You're quick to put down blogs, but how is what Ms. O'Gara does any different, if there's no editorial oversight? If nobody's her boss, nobody decided what she should or should not write about, nobody has oversight over her stories ... then what's that, if not the same thing as blogging?

I think the reason this guy's answers come off so terribly is that he's really not used to being in a position to defend editorial content. He's a business guy. He gets content, he syndicates it on the Web. Certain content goes out without the backing of an editorial department or the oversight of any staff editors? Great! All the cheaper. Well, now it's come to bite him in the ass and he really doesn't know what to say about it, except that he wishes it would all go away and he could go back to running his business.

Re:A Chilling Effect

[r7]

An opinion piece is something that lists the name of her mother (not PJ) and also gives a street address along with pictures of the outside of where she lives?

On top of that he says he found "nothing unethical" about the article. How could you ever trust a publication with an editor like that?

I will be checking my all of magazines for any reference to "Fuat Kircaali" or "Sys-Con Media" and not purchasing anything of the sort.

Editorial responsibility?

[walterbyrd]

>>We do not make decisions on behalf of Ms. O'Gara. I'm not her boss.

I don't know much about publishing. But, I thought that controlling content was indeed the responsibility of the editor?

If I were the editor, and I saw content that included publishing the address, and photos, of the home of PJ's elderly monther; I don't think I'd publish the story. That is the responsibility of an editor, isn't it?

Also, why does a tech publisher want to publish the address of a blogger's elderly mother? How is that related to technology?

JW stereotype

[Anonymous Coward]

Reporting that someone named Pamela Jones is (probably) a Jehovah Witness is factual, but irrelevant.

In her very last paragraph, her conclusion, Maureen O'Gara states that BECAUSE PJ has JW witness books in her(?) car, she cannot possibly be the real Groklaw.Net Webmistress.

Now how's that for a religious stereotype ? Can a Catholic be a competent Web author? What about an Eckankar follower ?

In fact, her faith is irrelevant, and MOG is WRONG trying to make it relevant. I shouldn't have to explain it to you ?

He didn't get it.

[Kid Zero]

*sigh*

He just doesn't get it. He thinks "Me Media! Me almighty journalist! Me do what I like! Me No apologize but call YOU moron! Worship Media!"

We think "God, what a idiot."

and they wonder why we don't trust them?

Re:Interview summary:

[Whyte]

Must be a Republican.

I think the correct term is Capitalist, but I can understand how easy they are to confuse.

Re:A Chilling Effect

[pallmall1]

What's chilling is O'gara. It took awhile to put my finger on it, but O'gara was writing a message, not any kind of article. Think about it; there was no news value, no "facts" stated concretely, and no effort whatsoever to reach any interested reader on either side of the SCO debate.
O'gara didn't write this to readers. She wrote this directly to PJ, intending to shake her up by instilling an uneasy sense of fear not only for herself, but FOR HER FAMILY. "Watch your step, PJ. You'd never forgive yourself if someone close to you got hurt. It's a dangerous world, with serial killers and all. ...and accidents happen all the time. See,PJ, if I can find you, so can anyone -- especially now." Now THAT'S chilling.

Re:Huh? Does this man use his own dictionary?

[Master of Transhuman]

I'm not sure there WAS any "attack". Did anybody hear about such a thing before this interview? Especially since he claims it was the "biggest DoS attack" ANY media company has suffered?

It sounds to me like this guy was claiming such in order to use the same "OSS people are wackos" claim that Laura DiDio AND MoG used.

Which is very suspicious. It tends to make me think he's part and parcel of the same SCO-loving crew since he uses the exact same tactics.

He came across as somewhat of an arsehole

[elronxenu]

This was the guy's chance, probably his only chance, to acknowledge that Maureen O'Gara's stuff was beyond the pale, to say sorry for it and renew readers' faith in the quality of his publications.

Instead he chose to use his time to pick nits about whether bloggers are reporters and whether the telephone numbers which were published were business or personal.

And then he launched into a lengthy diatribe about how his websites were being DOSed by "fanatics" and how people were complaining to his advertisers.

The "DOS" was most likely just a slashdotting. I know for a fact that Groklaw suffered load related problems when the "Intimidation" and followup articles were posted. Groklaw hit some kind of resource limit on comments on the "Intimidation" article, and I was seeing PHP error messages too. If Mr Kircaali saw a much higher flow of traffic than usual, for several days afterward, that would be because he didn't pull all of the Maureen O'Gara stories off his websites, contrary to his promise. There were reports that some stories had remained and my impression is that it took a few days before they were all gone. Of course people are going to reload the site frequently during this time - those who care whether SYS-CON.COM keeps its promise, and those who care whether any Maureen O'Gara stories remain.

And as for the second horn of Mr Kircaali's contention, that people were unjustly contacting his advertisers, my understanding is that the continued presence of Maureen O'Gara at SYS-CON.COM had been an issue for 6 months and Mr Kircaali had refused to terminate her for that length of time. If something's an issue for that long, of course somebody is going to escalate it. And the advertisers are ultimately Mr Kircaali's boss.

Mr Kircaali defends the practice of running Microsoft advertisements on a Linux website by asserting the absurdity of refusing to run Microsoft advertisements on a Microsoft website. This is a straw man argument; few people would complain about seeing Microsoft advertisements on a .NET website. But Microsoft is the enemy of Linux specifically and Free Software in general, so it is rather disturbing that an OSS advocacy site should run their advertisements (this includes Slashdot).

Finally Mr Kircaali closes with some choice weasel words on the issue of privacy, an unsubtle insult to Groklaw's readers ("if the majority of Ms. Jones' readers are the same people whom we dealt with this week, now I understand better why she may want to remain anonymous") and a bit of bignoting themselves as the victim: a media company who became a victim of perhaps the biggest cyber attack in history.

My opinion is, whatever the merits of Mr Kircaali's arguments, he chose exactly the wrong way to close off the matter. I doubt he has endeared himself to anybody except Microsoft, who believe they benefit by painting Linux supporters as vigilante zealots.