New book mentions the Seigenthaler episode Options

[Daniel Brandt]

A new "Establishment" book will be released on October 25, 2011. Amazon already lets you search inside this book, and it will be available for Kindle. The hardcover is published by St.Martin's Press (289 pages).

Digital Assassination: Protecting Your Reputation, Brand, or Business Against Online Attacks

The authors are Richard Torrenzano and Mark Davis. Torrenzano is chief executive of the Torrenzano Group, a New York strategic communications firm. For almost a decade he was a member of the New York Stock Exchange's Management and Executive committees. Davis is a former White House speechwriter (for the first Bush) and a senior director of the Washington-based White House Writers Group.

There are some review blurbs on Amazon. Here is one: "Torrenzano and Davis blend a compelling narrative, killer anecdotes and page-turning prose into a sober and worrying account of what happens when the darker side of human nature harnesses the connectedness and anonymity of today's web. Their Digital Assassination should be in the hands of anyone who has a good name — or a good business — to protect." —Mike Hayden, former Director, Central Intelligence Agency; former Director, National Security Agency

Here is an excerpt, as quoted on Amazon:

ON JUNE 5, 1968, for reasons known only to himself, Sirhan Sirhan fired a bullet into the head of Robert F. Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, killing him. In May 2005, a Nashville man, for reasons known only to himself, used Wikipedia to fire a bullet directly into the reputation of John Seigenthaler, former Kennedy aide, civil rights hero, and newspaper publisher, character assassinating him to the core. The Wikipedia entry reported that Seigenthaler: "was the assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early 1960's. For a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven.... John Seigenthaler moved to the Soviet Union in 1971, and returned to the United States in 1984."

Was the entry correct? Did it matter? It did to Seigenthaler. "At age 78," he later wrote in USA Today, "I thought I was beyond surprise or hurt at any negative said about me. I was wrong. One sentence in the biography was true. I was Robert Kennedy's administrative assistant in the early 1960s. I also was his pallbearer."

Did the entry really harm Seigenthaler? At that time, one of the authors was asked to pen an introduction of Seigenthaler for a speaker at a charitable event. Though not fooled by the Wikipedia entry, the writer took pause, consuming valuable time and attention to sort out the story in advance of the event. There is no telling how many others linked to John Seigenthaler were similarly perplexed ... or actually believed it. The entry sat on Wikipedia's page for 132 days, and was picked up uncritically by two widely used information automatons, Reference.com and Answers.com. For those 132 days, Seigenthaler's character was assassinated — not the man himself, but his reputation, his avatar constructed of words spoken and written.

Mark Davis interviewed me last April for this book because Seigenthaler referred him to me, and I am briefly mentioned in connection with the Seigenthaler episode. Then he goes on to write about Rachel Marsden and Jimbo.

[Peter Damian]

Thank you. The main thing I wanted to confirm is that if it had not been for you raising this with the New Yorker, the affair would not have got public attention. It was already known by January that there was a problem, but (from what I can piece together) the Wikipedians were too naïve to understand the implication of this). It was only when the New Yorker published the correction (as a result of your persistence) and the blogosphere reacted, that they realised.

Sorry to hijack the thread.