It's a Jungle Out There in Cyberspace   

Epithets were hurled, insults were slung and hostility filled the bandwidth, and in the end no one was enlightened, consensus was not reached and nothing was resolved. But it sure did make good reading.

It all started with three words: IMPEACH CONNIE CHUNG.

This simple thought inspired a raging, intense and more often than not vituperative debate on an Internet listserver for journalists.

The message that accompanied the incendiary call for Chung's ouster (over her interview with Newt Gingrich's mother, for those who are just now emerging from under their rocks) referred to Chung, in passing, as a "shameless tabloid whore."

But as everyone who contributed to the escalating discussion over the next 10 days quickly found out, there are no passing thoughts on the 'Net. Everyone is held accountable for his or her opinion, and no one, not even the innocent newbie venturing into cyberspace for the first time, is beyond immediate and exacting reproach. Lurkers, those who always read but never post, are the only ones safe.

Like talk radio programs, Internet discussion groups have the ability to galvanize public opinion in a matter of minutes. The Internet played a role in rallying disapproval of Time magazine's altered O.J. Simpson cover, and again in spreading the word about the Pentium debacle. The groups often host the frustrations of those who either have too much time on their hands, or who seek a place to vent, or both. In the fallout from the Chung/Mrs. Gingrich contretemps, more than 80 postings, containing at least that many opinions, offered a window into the world of online debate.

Though one might expect more measured analysis of timely topics from journalists, it seems even they can't resist the temptation to offer instantaneous, if not knee-jerk response, replete with insults and name-calling.

Chung's defenders depicted her efforts to coax Kathleen Gingrich into revealing her son's true feelings about Hillary Clinton as the aggressive efforts of a resourceful journalist. Her detractors said her behavior was yet another sign that mainstream journalism is sinking to the level of supermarket tabloids.

The first response to the impeachment rallying cry skirted any questions of ethical breaches or journalism standards, jumping instead to a more inflammatory and, as is all too common on the Internet, less relevant issue.

"I question the appropriateness of calling her a 'whore,' " one poster stated. "Besides being shamefully sexist, it is unprofessional and divisive."

Divisiveness immediately became the theme of the thread, and the debate continued to dominate SPJ-online long after the media and the rest of the world had moved on to more pressing issues.

"Calling journalists prostitutes has been commonplace for decades. But in cases like Chung's it's an insult to streetwalkers," one poster wrote.

"I've had more than enough of this thread and your pseudo-ethical posturing," another exasperated poster wrote. "You seem determined to abuse the hospitality of this list. Please: Either raise your discussion to a level more befitting the SPJ-online list or take it to an alt.newsgroup where you can wallow in all the mud you like."

But as these posters and many others learned, there are no last words in cyber-space. Offense was taken at even the most "and that's final" of postings, renewing the flame fervor and inspiring several tangential contributions. One recent SPJ-online thread, for example, drifted from debate over publishing the names of those involved in police investigations to questioning the credentials of an unsuspecting poster who dared to offer a contrasting opinion.

ýharles Stough, chief copyboy of the online newsletter BONG Bull (Burned-Out Newspapercreatures Guild) and a copy editor at the Dayton Daily News, who posted a few times during the Chung flamefest, attributes the redundancy of online debate to the preponderance of a "more ethical than thou" attitude, which he finds "unseemly."

"The problem is that every opinion is equally weighted, whether it's smart or not..and you get a subject creep from Connie Chung, to what is a bitch, to feminism, to the assertive man/bitchy woman thing, and in another week or two we would have had salad recipes," Stough says.

Many familiar with the Internet echo the feeling that much of the discussion is trivial, and that, more often than not, debate rapidly disintegrates into verbal assaults and idle banter.

SPJ-online list owner Jack Lail, assistant managing editor for technology at the Knoxville News-Sentinel, admits that discussions on the listserver are "kind of circular."

"A lot [of the postings] are not particularly original thought," Lail says. "It's not like an op-ed piece where you read it a couple of times before you send it. As soon as you type your name it's gone."

Asked if the back-and-forth of online debate is valuable, Stough responds, "No, I don't think it's worth it. The truth goes out, but there's a lot of painful debate in the arguing. It's really kind of childish, like what happens when you give a 13-year-old a CB radio."

Joe Abernathy, senior editor for news at PC World magazine, says that much of the problem stems from the medium itself. "The nature of the Internet is changing," he explains. "As the number of people increases, the quality of the people decreases. Lots of well-informed people won't get close to any of [the listservers]."

Abernathy does defend the need for some online debate among journalists, but feels that the nature of journalists precludes online niceties. "I mean, how many nice reporters do you know?" Abernathy jokes.

In response to the need for a more articulate journalism forum, Abernathy created a flame-resistant shelter, a private mailing list that is limited to working reporters. He describes his mailing list as a place where journalists can discuss the issues "and be nasty and get it ironed out without embarrassing the profession."

Though such an option might become more prevalent in the future, many journalists are now either left in the lurk, avoiding posting at all for fear of retaliation, or are posting at their own risk, subjecting themselves to the merciless scrutiny of other journalists.

For now, Abernathy offers this rule of thumb: "Just because you can post, doesn't mean you should."