What would Isabel do?
South African blogger Donn Edwards is being sued for libel by a timeshare company called Quality Vacation Club (QVC) after he wrote of his experience with the company. I have no axe to grind with the timeshare industry. But if they bend the rules and dupe people into buying things they don’t want, then they should get exposed.
But this post isn’t about the rights and wrongs of Donn’s case or the relative sleaziness of those who employ dodgy means to sell timeshare. What worries me, as someone who from time to time vents online about bad or downright shady service they get from someone, is the prospect of the floodgates being opened for litigation from any big corporate who is feeling hard done by or belittled by a blogger. This is going to be an interesting test case for South African online journalism and free speech.
But there’s another angle to this. Bloggers are quick to demand the same rights afforded other media and citizens, to jump up and down if they feel they are being silenced or muzzled in some way. However they are less quick to adopt some of the practices the other media use to ensure that, in exercising their right to free speech, they also adopt the principles of fairness and balance.
