Mayhem, murder and malicious content on Shelburne's wild, wild west on Facebook
Each year, 20-30 journalists the world over are successfully targeted for murder, most often because the assassin has taken offence at what is or has been published. Threats to do harm and actual assassinations are most common in countries engaged in wars or great social turmoil; Yemen, Brazil, Syria and France top the list.
It has been 22 years since a Canadian journalist has been murdered and I hope that timeline can be extended.
But an exhortation made less than three days ago on the raucus Shelburne Exchange Facebook blog urges 1700 readers to shoot me has understandably caused me some stress.
Threats of harm to journalists often do not result in any action, but in those same 22 years, more than 500 journalists the world over have been murdered. I am hoping not to be added to that number.
My writing over the past 15 years about the bumbling, missteps and minor corruptions of local politicians and civic leaders has caused stress for the subjects of some of my stories and I have been threatened with legal action and have had a local bully assault me after I wrote critically about his preferred candidate and then caught him stealing political signs from my property.
Despite the threats, assaults and bullying, the recalcitrant politicians, the periodic obfuscations by municipal councils and staffs, the tedious council meetings, thousands of mind-numbing news releases and hundreds of government PR folk spinning bad news into golden thread, as well as the myriad day-to-day humdrum - not to mention no pay for the thousands of hours invested - I have published more than 10,000 stories over the years.
Many people have found my unvarnished style and sometimes over-the-top prose annoying or troublesome, but not once has anyone presented any credible evidence that in any of the thousands of stories and hundreds of thousands of words has there been any error of fact.
In the offending story, I had the audacity to point out that the owner/moderator of the Facebook blog - a local Baptist pastor - had blatantly, carelessly and maliciously slandered a reputable mining executive whose only true crime was wanting to do business in the Town of Shelburne.
Several of her readers pounced like attack dogs and bullied and berated a local politician who had the audacity to befriend the businessman and encourage him to do business in the Greater Shelburne area.
Because of my track record for accuracy, the periodic loud, unpolished and sometimes rude postings on Facebook blogs claiming I "got it wrong" don't mean too much to me.
But the death threat does. And it should mean something to all of us.
What is perhaps more disturbing is that, when the owner/moderator of the site saw the threat minutes after it was posted, she did nothing. Oops. That's not true. She did do something. She egged on the death threat author. An hour after the "Timothy Gillespie should be shot - and shit on." post appeared, at least one Facebook member pleaded with the owner/moderator to remove the shooting threat. The post remains on the site two days later.
Despite the fact that there is no doubt about who made the threat, when they made it and where it was made, the RCMP advised me they will not be laying charges. Maybe a body slumped on my porch might change that a bit, but that wouldn't really make me a happy camper either.
See my offending story here: /content/baptist-preacher-gets-down-and-dir...
Timothy Gillespie is editor/publisher of South Coast Today
Comments
Since when is a death threat NOT a criminal offence?
The comments were removed by a moderator within two hours..not two days.
Screen grabs submitted to RCMP say 13 hrs and visual observation says 3 days.
Come one now, I read both sides you're both wrong in you're reporting, but, as John Mayer sang "when they own the information, they can spin it how they want"
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