Reputations need protection

I took a mild interest in the Sunday Age story this morning about a parent who set up a website criticising a school and its principal after her son was expelled for bullying.

Tintern is an Anglican grammar school in Ringwood. The principal is Jenny Collins.

I don’t know Ms Collins, but I feel confident in my assumption that she’s a reputable educator.

I don’t feel comfortable about the disparaging website that’s been created under the pseudonym of Julie Barkly.

Apparently the website’s creator is a “human rights and welfare lawyer”.

She’s obviously passionate, but if her son was wrongly expelled there are other ways of dealing with it.

The stated purpose of the website is to “raise legitimate issues about”:

• Use of excessive levels of school funding on aggressive & ineffectual lawyers (for questionable purposes) instead of appropriate expenditure on updating school resources;
• The acceptance of responsibility for failing to provide contracted services & management restructuring resulting in the termination of loyal & long serving staff member’s employment, and;
• Highly questionable & disingenuous use of student’s names to improperly facilitate a disgraceful expulsion.

I fully support freedom of opinion and expression, but this seems an excessive reaction.

And if the desire is to raise legitimate issues, why doesn’t the author give her real name?

The school is suing “Ms Barkly” for defamation.

However, the website and the defamation trial are curious sideshows to a more disturbing phenomenon.

The website provides an external link to “student views on principal Jenny Collins”. I won’t repeat some of the comments here because they are defamatory and nasty.

I’m shocked that such a site is allowed to exist.

It lends credence to the argument of people like former South Australian Attorney General, Michael Atkinson, who described a news website as “a sewer of criminal defamation” for allowing open slather on comments.

Ratemyteachers.com claims “the Supreme Court of the United States has held that anonymity of speech is protected under the First Amendment to the Constitution.”

Mr Atkinson was wrong in that newspapers have to be wary of defamation laws when deciding whether to allow particular comments.

There is no such protection for Australians who are defamed on overseas websites by anonymous posters.