In The Irish Times of Tuesday, columnist Finan O’Toole challenged sacked Sunday Independent columnist Eoghan Harris on his anonymous social media account. The piece was titled ‘For newspaper columnists, anonymity is a betrayal'.
Indeed, anonymity is always a betrayal, a disservice to truth.
O’Toole finishes his piece writing:
"The resurgence, through social media, of anonymity as a primary mode of public discourse is corrosive of both personal decency and democratic debate. It breeds millions of Sneerwells and Snakes. [He refers earlier to the characters in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The School for Scandal].
"But it is also, paradoxically, a backhanded compliment to the power of one’s own name. Trolls don’t put their names to bad stuff because they want to keep them free of the taint of the gutless spite. They know anonymity is a form of shame. Journalists should be at least as careful of their own good names.
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