The good news is that Dilpazier Aslam, the Guardian's in-house Islamist, has been asked to leave. But what to make of the response from the paper's own media section (registration required)?
Rightwing bloggers from the US, where the Guardian has a large online following, were behind the targeting last week of a trainee Guardian journalist who wrote a comment piece which they did not care for about the London bombings. The story is a demonstration of the way the 'blogosphere' can be used to mount obsessively personalised attacks at high speed.
The anonymous "staff reporter" goes on to list some of the most lurid posts from around the blogosphere. Scott Burgess' original items were actually similar in tone to the pieces the Guardian's own diary runs every day. ("Sassy" is the word that comes to mind, in fact.) And there was plenty of responsible coverage at Harry's Place. The Guardian would have us believe it's all the fault of a few misfits:
Scott Burgess, a blogger from New Orleans who recently moved to London, spends his time indoors posting repeated attacks on the Guardian for its stance on the environment, its columnists such as Polly Toynbee, and its recent intervention in the US presidential election campaign.
Well, if I wanted to be really childish, couldn't I also say that Alan Rusbridger spends his time indoors editing repeated attacks on Tony Blair for his stance on Iraq? Burgess was wrong not to divulge his own connection with the paper. But, really, the rest is just infantile.
(Via Harry & Laban Tall)
UPDATE: I hear that Scott's application for a Guardian traineeship was a hoax. I guess he'll clear that one up before long.
UPDATE 2: If you're having registration problems at the Guardian site, I've posted the article below the fold.
Aslam targeted by bloggers
By a staff reporter
Rightwing bloggers from the US, where the Guardian has a large online following, were behind the targeting last week of a trainee Guardian journalist who wrote a comment piece which they did not care for about the London bombings.
The story is a demonstration of the way the 'blogosphere' can be used to mount obsessively personalised attacks at high speed.
Within hours, Dilpazier Aslam was being accused on the internet of "violence" and belonging to a "terrorist organisation" - both completely untrue charges.
One blogger appealed for "some loyal Briton to saw off your head and ship it to me". Another accused Aslam of being guilty of "accessory before the fact to murder."
These ravings were posted alongside more legitimate questions as to whether a newspaper should employ a reporter who belongs to a controversial political group linked to the promotion of anti-semitic views.
Aslam's comment piece was about the attitudes of angry young Muslims in the north of England and headlined "We rock the boat: today's Muslims aren't prepared to ignore injustice".
It did not mention that the author was a member of the radical but non-violent Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir, proscribed in Germany and Holland as anti-semitic.
Scott Burgess, a blogger from New Orleans who recently moved to London, spends his time indoors posting repeated attacks on the Guardian for its stance on the environment, its columnists such as Polly Toynbee, and its recent intervention in the US presidential election campaign.
He pitched into Mr Aslam, who as it happened, beat him to the traineeship on the Guardian. Googling the 27-year-old Muslim's name, Mr Burgess picked up some articles the journalist had openly written in the past for Hizb ut-Tahrir websites and denounced him on his blogspot, The Daily Ablution, saying: "He is on record supporting a world-dominant Islamic state."
Another blogger, Laban Tall, wrote enthusiastically that Burgess' coup "has resounded across the blogging universe like a shockwave from a supernova".
He said: "I bet the Guardian wish they'd given him the job now, not Mr Aslam. Scott applied for the job in June 2004. Mr Aslam got it. They say revenge is a dish best eaten cold."
Mr Burgess fished out a website article written by Mr Aslam before September 11 for Hizb ut-Tahrir. He quoted one line: "Establishment of Khilafah [the worldwide Islamic caliphate] is our only solution, to fight fire with fire, the state of Israel versus the Khilafah state."
A fellow blogger, Dsquared, promptly accused him of using quotes out of context. "It is more than four years old, written when the author was a teenager, before 9/11 and during a really nasty episode early in the intifada. How many people posting on this blog would like to have their teenage scribblings used as an assessment of their politics as an adult?
"The way you've used these excerpts is a bit spintastic and if this is the worst you can dig up, I don't think the Guardian can be blamed for not rumbling him."
But meanwhile, New Jersey undergraduate Joe Malchow [aka Joe's Dartblog] was writing on his own blog: "Guardian employs known member of terrorist organisation."
Fantasies like this zoomed round the world and soon seeped into the paper's mainstream rivals.
Perhaps the most extreme blog was posted by "dreadpundit", a right-wing New Yorker using the name "Bluto". He wrote: "Okay, Dilpazier, I've decided to bow to your 'logic' - sauce for the goose and all that. That's why I'm issuing a secular fatwah and asking for some loyal Briton to saw off your head and ship it to me (use Fed-Ex, please, so I can get a morning delivery, and do remember the dry ice, also, a videotape of the "execution")."
In the Independent on Sunday, Shiv Malik, also briefly a Guardian intern, accused the hapless Aslam of mounting "a sting by Hizb ut-Tahrir to infiltrate the mainstream media".
And in the tabloid Sun, their attack-dog columnist, Richard Littlejohn, took the opportunity to claim: "A Guardian journalist has been unmasked as an Islamist extremist".
Many bloggers repeated Malik's untrue assertion - made in the Independent on Sunday - that the Guardian was "refusing to sack" Aslam.
The episode was a striking illustration of the way that blogs and bloggers can heat up the temperature and seek to settle scores - as well as raise legitimate concerns about journalism and transparency - when something awful happens in the streets of London.