humanitarian.info

This post has been brought to you by Tom Longley, a gentleman and a scholar, but not a blogger:

Q: What do the Mail on Sunday and the Government of Sudan have in common?
A: They both hate bloggers.

After blogging UN diplomat Jan Pronk was booted out of Sudan – in part for writing in his blog what he had said in public – those of us who work in the relief and development sector have been deprived of another candid and erudite link into the world of humanitarian policy and practice.

Until last week, Owen Barder, the chief of Global Aid Effectiveness at the UK Department for International Development kept a lively, informative and popular blog called Owen’s Musings. Last week, the UK‘s Mail on Sunday – an influential right wing newspaper in the UK – published a piece called Hitler’s Bush, by Whitehall’s jogging blogger, written by Simon Walters.

In Walters’ list of slurs about Barder, the one that stands out has the effect (since it is *very* carefully worded) of attributing to him the words of an article to which he only *links* from his blog. The article Barder linked to was originally published in the Guardian – “Fascist America, in 10 easy steps” by Naomi Wolf, an article that was popular across the blogosphere. This innuendo has caused Barder to cease blogging and close down his website.

There is a mix of issues here, including the expectations we have of senior public servants (basically, omerta), the tendency of MSM to paint blogging as by definition both secretive and indiscreet, and the use of a person’s other interests to undermine one’s professional credibility. Perhaps the one most relevant to other bloggers, however, is how Barder was tarred by association with his links, the building block of blogging.

I include some links to others who have written more eloquently and comprehensively about this sorry episode than I can. However I doubt that this will encourage the sort of openness that we need in order to better understand how our governments spend public money, and to ensure that they are accountable for that spending.