What is the Streisand Effect? It is a term used to describe a phenomenon on the Internet where an attempt to censor or remove a certain piece of information (for example, a photograph, file, or even a whole website) backfires and the information receives extensive publicity on the Internet in a short period of time.
ICoC Hot News is reporting on an article from the Daily Trojan that calls the LA ICoC a cult. (The USC article is here.) Responses in the HotNews article and the pro-ICoC comments to the story are almost the same. For those familiar with the ICoC, the responses follow the typical McKeanist pattern: attack the reporter, say mistakes were made, state that change has occurred, call for meeting with reporter and Chief Editors of newspaper. All of this reminds me of a certain committee chair that vowed to stamp out all church criticism within and without the ICoC. In many ways, this is similar to discussion on Wikipedia about Kip. Go figure.
More importantly, though, this kind of aggressive action could backfire. Because of the attention, traffic is being directed to anti-ICoC sites. Google searches on “Los Angeles Church of Christ” are only positive for the first two hits (at this moment in time, google searches are likely to change). If I was the LAICC, I wouldn’t be so quick to energize the anti-ICC folks. There are slightly more than three former members to every current member…
A small filler piece in a college newspaper is now becoming a big deal and it didn’t need to be. How is going through all the channels to publicly get the reporter to apologize and the editors to ‘change their ways’ going to help LA? Sure, I’d love to go to that church, they don’t let anyone talk bad about them!
For the record, here is the actual article written in the Catholic Newsletter in the Fall of 2000. If you want to talk fair and balanced, has anyone criticizing the reporter read this article (pages 6 and 7) she used as a source. Considering the actual article, the reporter was being really nice.
Also for the record, this is the letter that the Office for Religious Life wrote to the Daily Trojan.