News Ltd CEO's Idiotic Claim "Bloggers Don't Go To Jail" Becomes International News



By Darryl Mason

Raw Story has picked up on the absurd, misinformed claims about bloggers aired yesterday by News Limited CEO, John Hartigan :

The difference, he says, between professionals and amateurs is that bloggers don’t go to jail for their work – they simply aren’t held accountable like real reporters.

This is now running as a major headline story on Raw Story, which pulls more online readers than many Murdoch news sites. So this must be particularly irritating.



Raw Story corrects the News Limited CEO for his ignorance:

Even in America, bloggers have been jailed for various reasons.

It is amusing to see that John Hartigan, who seemed so angry that bloggers and independent news sites were using Murdoch journalists' work as "free content" has now provided so much more "free content" for those independent news sites and bloggers.

This story, and all the other "free content" stories to be found in Hartigan's speech about Why Bloggers Are Shit, will now start taking flight through that despised blogosphere, and provide a feast of "free content" for independent online media.

UPDATE : Hartigan's attack on bloggers and stunning disinformation that bloggers don't go to jail, and are not held accountable, has been cut from the column-stuffing reprints of his speech, here and here, running in today's copies of The Australian.