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This is a story of how self-declared “terrorism expert” Glen Jenvey, acting as an agent provocateur under the name of Abu Islam, created a false story by posting allegations on an Internet forum, and then passed that story to the national press on his own behalf and made the front page of the Sun.

This process has been investigated and uncovered by two bloggers over a number of months, and featured on the Donal McIntyre programme on Radio 5 yesterday.

The key spadework has been done by Tim Ireland of Bloggerheads, and Richard Bartholomew of Barth’s Notes, who have been digging into this for some time. Both Richard and Tim have posted again this weekend. Many congratulations to them both.

There was also a widespread internet campaign of defamation, making false allegations against Tim Ireland via comments on blogs. This was my sole involvement in this one, as a comment was posted on the Wardman Wire. That highlights the personal cost that can be involved in investigative citizen journalism.

The bizarre aspect is that Glen Jenvey has apparently confessed due to his own conversion to radical Islam.

There is also a more potentially sinister aspect – that of gung-ho coverage of anti-Islam stories in the British media provoked and seeded by commentators whose political attitudes are sympathetic to such stories. A good example of this style of coverage was the inflammatory coverage of the demonstration by approximately 20 extremists during a parade of soldiers returned from Basra in Luton, in March this year. By contrast, a far more balanced report was published by the Nofolk Unity blog.

This is another story which asks serious questions of the quality and professionalism of the processes of journalism in our national media – following on most recently from the Baltimore spoof. In turn this asks the question whether there is actually much material that is worth putting behind firewalls, and in whether discerning readers will be willing to pay for it for long.

It also highlights how digging by bloggers can help uncover stories, which then get wider attention than is currently delivered in the UK by blog sites.

Finally, I’d note that bloggers can have exactly the same biases as newspapers for stories which fit in with our own opinions, and none of us are immune to that – including me. So we need to pay attention to all the traditional disciplines of good journalism – multiple sourcing, sanity checks by a third party if we have a concern, and the separation of reporting from opinion.

I’ve been off air for a couple of days.

I note that Tim Ireland of Bloggrheads has continued asking some sensible questions (initial post) about Glen Jenvey, and is being targetted himself with paedophile smears rather than receiving sensible anwers. Tim’s investigative style is like a pre-Twitter version of Twitter, so the best summary to read is probably that written by Richard Bartholomew.

I’m backing Bloggerheads.

Note that this statement is personal, and is not on behalf of any other contributors to this site.

This whole affair is related to Tim’s work uncovering planted stories in the national media:

This is a story of how self-declared ‘terrorism expert’ Glen Jenvey, acting as an agent provocateur under the name of Abu Islam, reportedly created a false story by posting allegations on an internet forum, and then passed that story to the national press on his own behalf and made the front page of the Sun.

which has been covered mainly by Tim himself, and by Richard Bartholomew, with a couple of small pushes from me. Tim’s latest (which is where Redwire Design comes in) is a continued effort to track down those who have been harassing him online.