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The Charlotte Dawson troll saga shocked many Australians, with revelations of vile tweets, death threats and online intimidation. Nobody should have to endure this kind of abuse, but unfortunately it’s surprisingly common for those of us working in areas that challenge strong interest groups, writes Professor Simon Chapman.
Over 35 years, my work as a public health researcher and advocate has upset many disease-promoting industries, their cheer squads and various nut-job cause leaders.
In the 1990s, after lobbying for gun law reform, I got lots of feverish hate mail from “decent, law abiding shooters” and a traced death threat. Each anniversary of the Port Arthur massacre I’m sent anonymous white feathers. Sixteen years on there has not been another mass shooting.
A leading anti-vaccinationist challenged me to bare my backside on TV while I was injected with all the evil vaccines I supported, calibrated up to match my weight. I didn’t do it but by coincidence, the next day I had five vaccines for an African trip. I write from the grave.
More recently, Gerard Henderson told readers that because I have no medical degree, no one should believe a word I say about the problems with prostate cancer screening – despite similar concerns having been raised by every expert group that investigated the issue. I’m sure Gerard wouldn’t listen to Oxford’s Sir Richard Peto, the world’s foremost epidemiologist, either. After all, he’s a mere mathematician.
Gerard’s sentiments are shared by UK blogger “Big” Dick Puddlecote, who sounds like he might be a Beatrix Potter villian. According to Dick, I’m a “swivel eyed loon … a sociologist who has posed as health expert for the past 30 years.”
The pro-tobacco people also have a way with words. And the growing momentum toward plain packaging has made their heads spin like Linda Blair in the green projectile vomit scene in The Exorcist.
According to the tobacco lobbyists, I am
“the Worst Public Health Person In The World … the perfect storm of a card-carrying public health person who is harmful to both public health science and the public’s health.”
I am also
“responsible for the most pointless deaths of his countrymen since the guy who ordered the army to Gallipoli”.
All this is because in the 1980s, I advised the government to ban smokeless tobacco (chewing tobacco and snuff) in Australia, thwarting a circling US tobacco company hoping to start a whole new route of addiction here.
For years, the author of this nastiness, “Professor” Carl Phillips who “runs a university-like research shop”, took money from the smokeless tobacco industry. Unlike the fools who awarded me various medals for my work, Carl notes that “nothing Chapman ever did made any substantial difference in the inexorable flow” away from smoking. Apparently, it all happens by itself.
Bathing in cyber sewage
Within the blogosphere is a sewer of frothing, often anonymous, swill. The comments are today’s equivalent of the threatening call from a phone booth. A dozen or so blogs I check on occasionally – with the compulsion we have to look at car crashes – are echo chambers for the same small group of serial hate mongers.
Jay, who has the gift and never exaggerates, says of me:
“Like a vicious herpes infection, or a stinking, floating turd that just won’t be flushed, Simon Chapman won’t go away. To say he is a petty, hateful bastard is being way too kind. This man is quite possibly the root of all evil in modern society. In the fullness of the time, the world will see him as one of the most hateful beings to have lived.”
I don’t believe we’ve met, Jay.
Always on the spot with timely comparisons, Lou observed recently,
“The similarities in reasoning between Simon Chapman and Anders Breivik are terrifying. Both are convinced of their own ‘right’ and thus their justification to take life. Simon Chapman only wants official sanction to do this and I have no doubt he would derive great pleasure in shooting smokers. Indeed I suspect he would spend many years doing little else.”
Lock your doors.
One commenter suggested that April should be “make Simon Chapman regret saying silly things on Twitter month”. Terrified, I locked myself in my lead-walled bunker.
Patsy had a red hot go, insisting I earn $3 million a year (that’s around the total competitive grant funds I share with various colleagues, spread across five years, all of which pays for staff). But Pasty won’t hear a bar of it. She says I’m “a dangerous sociopath and he scares me”.
Another troll says I’m
“…the kind of vermin that now infest our society … I believe he’s been involved in producing several studies which I would dearly love to boil down in fish oil and force feed him every rotten scrap.”
But nothing prepared me for the UK’s Christopher Snowdon, an “independent” blogger who is now a cyber errand boy for Big Tobacco. I’ve copped “grandpa”, “scrotum-faced head-banger” and “wrinkled rocker”, all because I have attained the advanced age of 60 and sing in a band. With life expectancy of at least another 20 years, about half of young Master Christopher’s age, I plan to be around for a while.
Meanwhile, smoking rates are the lowest on record and still in free fall. Today’s male lung cancer rates per 100,000 were last seen in 1962 and female will never get to half the peak seen in males.
(This article was originally published at The Conversation. Read the original article.)
18 Comments
They are long on insults and threats and short on facts. Dangerous people!
The way in which people are willing to believe anything because it is in print : and now on the web is quite startling.
In today’s Sun Herald chief reporter Kate McClymont has made the false claim that I am a private eye called Frank Monte posing as a solicitor or barrister. I am none of these things nor have ever claimed to be.
I think McClymont has simply repeated something she read on the net and embellished it. Neither she nor her editor have bothered to return my emails pointing out the truth. If they are this slack and simply make up things because they read it on the net, how can we believe anything they write ?. And can we assume it’s a form of “trolling” to falsely accuse you of something you are not?
Dear IAN DALE, thank you so much for your comment. I invite you to expand on it here.
Hello Tess. There isn’t much more to say. I believe the journalist has gone off half cocked after reading something on another website, put two and two together and come up with five and jumped to conclusions. As to the rest of her article, I know nothing off the facts and after her howler concerning me, I wouldn’t know what to believe.
Ian, I think using the comments under this article to talk about an issue that isn’t relevant is, with respect, a tad rude. The person who wrote the article about you is identified, she works for an organisation that can be sued for defamation. So why not do that instead of putting posts up here? Or if you want IA to defend you, perhaps it would be a good idea to include in your posts a link to your law society profile. I’ve looked and I can’t find it and I can’t find any reference on the web to you as a lawyer.
Dear IAN DALE, given your earlier comment, I would suppose there is much more to say.
Are you indeed the same Ian Dale referred to by Ms McClymont? And if you are of the same name, why do you suppose it is you to whom Kate refers ? I have done a brief search and there are a number of Ian Dales in Australia at least.
Vanda : I think it’s a tad unfair to claim my post isn’t relevant to the subject which I believe is about internet harassment and the good Professor appears to be making a point that well known writers can go on the attack. I believed I was pointing to a similar case that has happened to me.
I think you have mis-read my post : I am not a lawyer and have never claimed to be. That is my point.
Defamation actions are costly to fund and the outcome not guaranteed for a variety of reasons especially when the opponent has deep pockets. It is the one area of law that is the exclusive preserve of the rich with most citizens excluded because of cost.
However I have no wish to divert discussion of an article so this will be my last post.
Tess : there is indeed much more to say but not now. I fear I shall be trolled! Cheers.
Dear IAN DALE, rather than fear you will be ” trolled ” please say it here.Let us see for whom the bell trolls.
In the meantime: –
LIFE AS A FAKE CATCHES UP WITH PI
From KATE MCCLYMONT’s article in THE SUN-HERALD yesterday: -
After The Sun-Herald article, titled ”The full Monte – this cheat wants to be mayor”, was published in April, he responded by creating a fake lawyer to threaten websites that republished the article. The mysterious ”Ian Dale” warned that Monte had commenced an action in the NSW Supreme Court and had served a summons for malicious libel on this reporter.
This, like much of Monte’s business practices, was a fiction. There is no person called Ian Dale registered as a solicitor or barrister and no such action has been filed in the Supreme Court. In his legal threats ”Mr Dale” had stated: ”The article claimed Mr Monte was the owner of businesses which he has no interest in.”
But police documents filed with the tribunal allege Monte was behind the various businesses and also used numerous pseudonyms to rip people off.
In July, the NSW police force’s Security Licensing & Enforcement Directorate notified Monte that it would not be renewing his licence. According to the SLED, it had received 100 complaints about his business practices.
Over the past 15 years, NSW Fair Trading has received 43 complaints against Monte and his associated companies. Over the same period, there have been 44 complaints about companies and private investigators trading under Monte’s pseudonyms. In court documents, police alleged Monte was behind businesses such as Monte Investigation Group, Monte Investigation Services, Mason Steele, Morgan Turner Freeman, MTFPI and Parker Taylor.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/life-as-a-fake-catches-up-with-pi-20120908-25l0g.html#ixzz2616rdzvN
Ian Dale, if you are not a barrister or solicitor then your concern doesn’t make sense. Ian Dale is a common name. What in the above article leads you to believe that she is referring to you?
What I meant by my comment is that the person who wrote the article is identified and details her research. You say it’s wrong, but you have ways of dealing with that. People who are being targeted on-line are usually targeted by anonymous commentators who abuse and vilify them. There is a world of difference between your alleged experience and the experience of being targeted by on-line bullies.
I think the points being made here are more to do with the nature of the internet and the way it has turned everyone into a publisher and often , the truth is a casualty.
The article above mentions a well known Herald contributor from a think tank who has attacked the author which in turn gives rise to trolls.
This is similar to how Julia Gillard has been attacked by the likes of Alan Jones and that Pickering bloke which then seems to give the impetus to a whole lot of anonymous trolls to go haywire.
I have spent 3 years now defending an ageing relative from a vicious on-line campaign. Yet she has never actually seen the on-line attacks but her relatives have.
This could all be avoided if those who provide the platforms like Twitter, facebook etc would provide adequate measures for victims to get rubbish removed.
Instead they claim they operate under the USA’s suspect ‘freedom of information’ law but still make their profits in Australia and as Malcolm Turnbull MP has pointed out, have decidedly suspect tax arrangements.
Oscar I’m afraid it looks very much to me like Ian Dale and Oscar Jones are the same person. You have posted as Oscar Jones under another article (and totally OT) about a PI who is having trouble with the police. Both Ian and Oscar seem to have an interest in the above article and be using this platform to pursue that interest.
And it seems to me that you’re using the internet in the same way as those you say you are concerned about. You have made a somewhat odd allegation about a contributor to a Fairfax paper being from a think tank which has attacked the author. Do you mean it’s you who has been attacked? Are you talking about the journalist being from a think tank? What are you trying to say?
When you come on line using identities that may or may not be real, making strange and vague allegations about other people, you are indulging in exactly the same behaviour as that discussed in this article and decried by Ian and Oscar.
Vanda, it appears to me that you are the one who is making allegations here.
I can confirm that, quite contrary to your assertions, Oscar Jones and Ian Dale are writing from different URL’s and have different email addresses. I would suggest, for that reason, unless they are undertaking a very elaborate ruse, they are unlikely to be the same person.
As for anonymity, I note that you have not come online under your full name. In the interests of tranparency, noting your comments, perhaps you may wish to disclose that so we can establish whether you have any links to this case or the journalist in question?
David Donovan
IA managing editor
Mr Donovan, Oscar Jones has been very keen to promote the interests of Mr Monte for some time, although he might just be a friend for all I know or care.
I have half a dozen email addresses and if I want to I can use half a dozen IP addresses – these days I can’t be bothered.
I am not saying that Ian and Oscar are the same person and I don’t care, just that your method of determining them to be different is not very powerful.
If one IP address was say Telstra and the other Optus then you might have a point.
No, David, because it is an unusual name and I am easy to find. I don’t even like using my first name to be honest. I’ve had enough hate mail in my life!
I can assure you I don’t have any connection to the journalist in question of the company in question. Just opened the article and was subsequently a little concerned that someone seemed to be using an article about hate on the web to promote an agenda.
Oscar Jones has used other articles on this site to promote Mr Monte’s interests. I just think it’s a little odd, that’s all, and not how you would have wanted your site to be used. As the above poster pointed out, anyone with half a brain knows to use different IP addresses. It even happens just because of where you happen to be when you use a computer. If I wanted to I could use one of four totally different email addresses in five different locations and have a good reason (other than disguising myself) for doing so.
Dear Vanda : you seem a little touchy about the subject ‘Fairfax’ as though it touched a raw nerve. Did you read the entire article?
When you say : “You have made a somewhat odd allegation about a contributor to a Fairfax paper being from a think tank which has attacked the author. ”
I am referring to Gerard Henderson (Fairfax contributor) who is from the Sydney Institute and the following paragraph which is self explanatory :
“….told readers that because I have no medical degree, no one should believe a word I say about the problems with prostate cancer screening – despite similar concerns having been raised by every expert group that investigated the issue. I’m sure Gerard wouldn’t listen to Oxford’s Sir Richard Peto, the world’s foremost epidemiologist, either. After all, he’s a mere mathematician.
Gerard’s sentiments are shared by UK blogger “Big” Dick Puddlecote, who sounds like he might be a Beatrix Potter villian. According to Dick, I’m a “swivel eyed loon … a sociologist who has posed as health expert for the past 30 years.”
How ironic that an article on internet trolls should result in me being attacked by anonymous posters.
I find this whole episode rather bizarre. I may look into it a bit deeper.
I forgot to point out : no I am not ‘IanDale’ so let your vivid imaginations run riot on some other fantasy.