Blake Stowell Email to Maureen O'Gara: "I Need You to Send a Jab PJ's Way"

By Pamela Jones
Groklaw

March 12 2010

So. Now I know. Now we all know.

Blake Stowell, then the PR guy for SCO, sent an email to Maureen O'Gara, saying "I need you to send a jab PJ's way," and then right afterwards she wrote that invasive so-called expose, in which she revealed, or at least intended to reveal, things like who I called on my phone. A la the HP scandal. She got fired [ http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050510114214525 ] for doing it the way she did, and the then-publisher apologized [ http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2005051921562747 ] to me publicly, but she says in the deposition she's not sorry a bit.

We learn this by reading excerpts from her deposition, previously under seal, attached to a letter [ http://www.groklaw.net/pdf2/Novell-791.pdf ] SCO's attorney sent to the court. SCO doesn't want the part of her deposition video played where she talks about me and Groklaw. It's beyond eye-opening, however, despite her pretense, as I see it, that there is no connection between the two events.

They also don't want the part about an email she sent to SCO, subject line, "I want war pay," played. It's allegedly humor. Just chatter. But you know, she is on the list of people SCO owes money to, now that I think of it, filed in connection with the bankruptcy. I wonder for what?

It isn't acceptable, in my eyes, that SCO's attorneys invariably smear Groklaw in every filing that mentions it. They don't just say "Groklaw," they say "the anti-SCO website, Groklaw." One can say quite a lot in legal filings, and get away with it, but there is a line where it becomes libel, when it is gratuitous, and that language is gratuitous. There isn't a media outlet that I can think of, other than Maureen O'Gara's newsletters, that hasn't criticized what SCO did. The Wall Street Journal was the first, actually, to suspect there was something rotten in Lindon, if you recall. Would it be acceptable to call it, in legal papers, the anti-SCO newspaper, the Wall St. Journal? I think not, and I suggest they are crossing a line.

I am an award-winning journalist [ http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=awards ], specifically for Groklaw. And they need to stop smearing my good name.

Here's the letter:

03/12/2010 - 791 - DOCUMENTS LODGED consisting of Letter from Brent O. Hatch. (asp) (Entered: 03/12/2010)

If anyone would please do the letter and her deposition in text for me, or in a perfect world, in HTML, I'd appreciate it. I want this on Groklaw so everyone can read it. Everyone. For as long as there is a Groklaw. Because it is now further proof, to me, that SCO was behind it, and it was just one more piece of its smear campaign against me, trying to get Groklaw to turn off the flashlight we had turned on SCO's litigation lottery.

As for her aspersions against Groklaw's reliability, I turn you to this article [ http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200505021223170 ], which may enlighten you as to O'Gara's factual reliability. I believe this is the article [ http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050222140715363 ] that made her mad about Groklaw correcting her. Or maybe it's this one [ http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20041023153851359 ]. I'm just guessing, as I can't read her mind. It's my happy lot that I don't understand her way of thinking or acting. But I suspect that is the article, one of them. She had made some factual mistakes, and I corrected them. Here's another factual error [ http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040830102724105 ] she made that I corrected. And another [ http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20041024021922796 ].

That's what the Society of Professional Journalists'Code of Ethics [ http://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp ] says journalists are supposed to do, correct other journalists' errors. And seek truth and report it. And here's an article [ http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20041026133519345 ] I wrote, asking my readers to be polite to and about O'Gara. Why? Because that's who I am. Here [ http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20041015061253950 ] is where I repeated my standing offer to let SCO speak on Groklaw, if they wanted to, speaking of fairness and lack of bias. They never accepted the invitation, but they continued to attack and demean and harass me.

Here's [ http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20041013152617291 ] what really bothered SCO about Groklaw, in Maureen O'Gara's own words: "SCO Is Chafing Badly Under the Propaganda War It Is Losing to Groklaw". What we do at Groklaw is antiFUD, by the way, not propaganda, but that's how they saw it, because it's who *they* are. As I put it in another article [ http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040918193214492 ] correcting her work:

We are really the pebble in their shoe, I gather. Or a burr in their saddle, as Ms. O'Gara might put it. But all Groklaw does is look for facts and put them where people can easily find them. That leads to great embarrassment in courtrooms, when lawyers read long lists of what SCO has said to the media and then contrast it with what SCO says in courtrooms, but we can't help it. We love truth.

Here's a question for Blake Stowell and Maureen O'Gara: if she is so unbiased and totally independent of SCO as claimed, how did Stowell dare to send her an email asking her to jab me as a favor to him? And on what legal basis would a public company ask a journalist to jab anyone reporting on the company?

Yes. I'm angry. Wouldn't you be?

Update: And Novell responds:

03/12/2010 - 792 [ http://www.groklaw.net/pdf2/Novell-792.pdf ] - DOCUMENTS LODGED consisting of Letter from Sterling A. Brennan. (asp) (Entered: 03/12/2010)

Novell most particularly would like the part about Groklaw played, because O'Gara's testimony about Chris Stone and what he allegedly told her in a phone call is uncorroborated by anyone else:

Accordingly, evidence of Ms. O'Gara's bias in favor of SCO -- and against Novell -- is critical for the jury to evaluate Ms. O'Gara's credibility compared to Mr. Stone's. The jurors should be allowed to assess all evidence which might bear on the accuracy and truth of Ms. O'Gara's testimony....
The third set of designations at issue show that Ms. O'Gara's contact at SCO, Blake Stowell, sent a message to Ms. O'Gara requesting that she "send a jab" to the purported author of the Groklaw site, which SCO's letter of earlier today states is an "anti-SCO" website. Within just over one month, Ms. O'Gara ran as a lead story an article on the purported author by calling her a "harridan," a word meaning "a woman regarded as scolding and vicious." This section of Ms. O'Gara's testimony is highly relevant to demonstrate the extent of Ms. O'Gara's bias. The speed with which she drafted a lead story on the exact topic of Mr. Stowell's request and the insulting tone of the story suggest a willingness on Ms. O'Gara's part to step beyond her role as a disinterested journalist when it comes to matters involving SCO.

Incidentally, it's not Groklaw.com. It's Groklaw.net.