I am not completely convinced by The Times reasons for naming the Nightjack blogger.
It seems more like another shot in the battle between established & citizen journalists, a turf war in its way
I am very much on the side of organised, edited print journalism, I couldn’t do without my daily fix. But the press claims the right to protect sources - provided they know who they are – which has its sinister side. Exposing Nightjack in the way they have done seems like a ‘we know where you live’ warning to others who blog pseudonymously
Of whom I am one
In my case it is because, as The Times own literary editor wrote not so long ago, there is a certain freedom in anonymity
The freedom in part just comes from never having to answer the question Why did you write that?
There are things you cannot always say to the other people around you, because you do not want to hurt them by seeming to challenge their cherished views, or not to cause offence, or just not to be thought mad by them
I call it the I don’t like spaghetti problem
That seemingly innocuous statement of fact or preference would be a very rude thing to say if you had invited me round for a meal, which turned out to be a dish of your famous spag bol. So I would not say it
Who has not had the experience of remarking, just in the course of general conversation, that one does not like something or the other & being taken aback by the response of one of the others present – you would think aspersions had been cast on their first born
Then there is the old English injunction, never tread on the delicate grounds of money, religion or politics
There is a long tradition of anonymity for writers, for a whole variety of reasons. Quite why it should have prevailed in Victorian journalism, magazine fiction & of course novels (George Eliot) remains a bit of a mystery, though the tradition continued until surprisingly recently in The Times itself, & for all I know may still be the rule for the TLS
One good result of all this anonymity is that the detective work needed to establish who they ’really’ were provides lots of work for literary historians
Some authors adopt pseudonyms simply because they are too prolific – their publishers cannot or will not publish all they write – John Creasey & Elizabeth Linington for example
Or because they want to write in a completely different genre like Cecil Day Lewis
Anonymity comes with responsibility however. I try my level best not to presume upon anyone else’s privacy, to write about the lives or preoccupations of my family or of anyone not already in the public eye. I try not to be rude, (not even to those who ask for it!), to reveal secrets which have been entrusted to me, or to pass on lies or misinformation. Whether I succeed or not is a matter of opinion
I do not think that any writer or blogger can expect, or demand, to maintain their anonymity as of right unless some real danger is involved. If you want to write in secret keep a diary in a locked drawer, don’t show off on the internet
Nightjack & other police bloggers (as well as others whose real lives & points of view are often not well represented in the printed press) perform a useful & valuable service, one which it would be, on balance, a Bad Thing if lost, so it would be a pity if such people took fright at the legal ruling
Nightjack’s really big mistake was in letting his name go forward for the Orwell Prize & then accepting it by proxy. That really is trying to have it both ways, & was bound to get up someone’s nose
