Yesterday was never meant to be a busy day for Stereokill. We had no big articles in the pipeline and no major changes planned. By the close of business, however, we had helped create a lively cyber-mob, inadvertantly committed a character assassination, and been subtly accused of libel by a major national newspaper. In fact, once all was said and done, it turned out to be – statistically – the busiest day in the history of Stereokill.
We made some mistakes. That much is true. Now, we want to explain exactly what happened.
Early in the afternoon, two Stereokill staff members caught the buzz on Twitter regarding the sudden appearance of a promotional copy of Imogen Heap‘s upcoming album on eBay, and started work on what was intended to be only a small news piece. We acquired one piece of information that was not yet widely known: the full name of the journalist and the publication to which the promo was sent (in photographs on the eBay listing, only parts of these names were visible). We identified him as James Cabooter, a writer working for The Daily Star.
We then proceeded to publish a somewhat accusatory article, in which we referred to the sale as “a supreme act of crassness”, which suggested “a certain moral ambivalence” in the seller (who we believed to be Cabooter). An earlier revision even used the term “scumbag”, though this was later edited out. In short, we were fairly unequivocal in our criticisms.
A link to the article rapidly spread via Twitter, generating an unexpectedly large amount of traffic to the article. Two hours after the story was posted, Tom Savage, Deputy Night News Editor at the Daily Star, left a comment on the article, acting as pretty much the sole public statement from the paper. He then sent an email to the SK editors, expanding on this statement, and asked that the article be altered to, quote, “exonerate [James]“.
We received one further email from the Star, informing us that the piece was “libeling James Cabooter as a thief”, and that our “defamation was spreading around the web”. At this point, we edited the article to further clarify our position. Discussion continued to rage in the comments thread, but our involvement largely ended at this point.
We stand by our position, that the auction was reprehensible, but we accept that we pointed the finger at the wrong person. We backed down only on the identity of the seller, not on the principle of the article. The Star have made it clear that they do not believe that Cabooter was involved, and have stated that the promotional disc was stolen from their offices. They are carrying out their own in-house investigation, and we are eager to hear the outcome.
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This article represents the agreed stance of Stereokill's editorial team. 
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