On 7th June Sunderland Global Media (SGM) submitted a complaint to the owners of the Ready to Go forum, sometimes known as the “SMB”, regarding routine problems of false and misleading information posted about our site on the board.
Earlier that day, a former member of Empire Cinema’s staff in Sunderland contacted SGM informing us the facility was closing down. With a 52,000+ social media platform, SGM has a wide range of primary sources throughout the city that allow us to receive news in real time. Despite this, an RTG user rubbished SGM’s claim and made the false statement we cut and pasted the story from their board.
This is just one of many incidents. Earlier this year, a known local author also made the outrageous claim that SGM simply “steals” from residents of Sunderland and has no worthy work of its own. Frequently, members of the board often attack SGM’s Facebook following (that compromise a significant portion of the city’s population) from a position of sheer arrogance, depicting them as intellectually and morally inferior people. Sneering on things, or people is a large part of forum life.
Meanwhile, other users have falsely attempted to ludicrously depict SGM as being run by the Chinese government, just because its owner, many years ago, worked in the country briefly. We have no support for or from China’s Communist state, and our editorial line is committed to supporting human rights worldwide. We operate purely on Google AdSense revenue and local advertisers just to make ends meet! We also invest this money back into the community.
But at what moment, is a tipping point reached regarding unfair attacks? Given the board has a sporadic history of trashing local enterprises and businesses behind the guise of anonymous users, SGM subsequently made it clear that if this behaviour continued, our organisation would be prepared to publicly identify the worst culprits and would enhance journalistic scrutiny of the forum.
Some members claimed this is “illegal” but there is no law prohibiting the identification of anonymous trolls for purely defensive and public interest purposes. There is one group of these individuals after all, who are closely affiliated with the Sunderland Labour Party, and routinely use their online identities to bully, harass, defame and sneer at others.
The administrator of the board responded to this request by unprofessionally publicising the email with the intent of provoking ridicule against it and tarnishing the reputation of SGM. In doing so, the owners of the forum willingly omitted the context that the owner of SGM has been subject to a intense and very personal harassment campaign by members of that board, of which has been extremely distressing.
The RTG forum has a longstanding reputation for group related, targeted bullying. Members under the guise of anonymity, believe that they are exempt from any accountability regarding their own behaviour, acting as schoolboys, and the forum has long became a playground for this. Moderators of the board are aware of this, they are helpful, but this situation leaves much to be desired.
We would like to invite the RTG forum, constructively, to clean up its board culture, although significant improvement has been made over the past decade from what it was, there is still some way to go. SGM would like a positive and stable relationship with the board and does not seek to veer into conflict or confrontation with its owners.
However, when normal means of communication are exhausted, that is when misunderstandings grow and risks grow. Differences must be managed by clear dialogue, publishing an email and “throwing us to the wolves” is unprofessional. If RTG’s owners felt the email was inappropriate, then it might be worth questioning why things got to that stage in the first place.
SGM has authored hundreds upon hundreds of original articles and in depth work regarding Sunderland its history and culture, is it therefore any wonder that when some people want to repeatedly trash and dismiss the organisation out of hand, based on pure assumptions or falsehoods, that it might invoke a less than positive reaction?
We do not claim to be beyond scrutiny, as a new organisation it is fair to admit things have been less than perfect, sometimes we have made mistakes. But when they arise, we are obligated to learn from them quickly because we have to fulfill our obligations to the local community. Likewise many of the moderators on that forum, as volunteers also work hard and make a sincere effort, but this situation has been shockingly mishandled.
But SGM is ultimately committed to bettering itself and fighting for the best possible future for our city. We will continue to do this, and we will not be intimidated by an internet forum.
Likewise, we would like to wish the RTG forum owners all the best and hope differences can be properly managed in future.