Shortly afterwards, due solely to the more clued up people who responded in the comments and who took the couple of minutes needed to check the claim wrt the wicked paedophile-labelling blogger, Hickman wrote an update to his post: Johnny Ball denies 'climate zealots are ruining my career' claims.
Here's how it went.
@sharonf Hello Sharon. Just seen your new blog about all this. Looks like you've seen my updated blog too.
Leo Hickman
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@leohickman your updated blog still gives space to Ball to say I made "derogatory statements..totally out of order..blogs disappeared" untru
Sharon Fennell
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@sharonf But it provides links thru to u 4 readers 2 c what was really said on yr blog. Ball is 1 who doesn't come out of this well, not u
Leo Hickman
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@leohickman I'd hv wanted MSM journos to read blog in 1st place-not after commentors told them. appreciate link in 2nd article- despite ball
Sharon Fennell
@leohickman u say don't want to be "drawn in" to blogs being deleted or not. think journos shld have contacted me before publtn- right reply
Sharon Fennell
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@sharonf I say in my blog I had no reason to doubt him - I stand by that. Ideal world, we wld check evrything, but readers did detctive work
Leo Hickman
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@leohickman ideal world! wld hv taken 2 mins to check his assertion, before ur original piece- it's on his blog. he wasn't vilified by me.
Sharon Fennell
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@sharonf ...and all the others who joyfully ran with this story why they haven't corrected their stories at all
Leo Hickman
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@leohickman oh I will! disgraceful how this took off from nothing. Maybe should be flattered I was accorded so much influence over celeb ;)
Sharon Fennell
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@sharonf As I think I said in comments beneath my blog, this ended up being more a media studies lesson than anything else. A lesson 4 all
Leo Hickman
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@leohickman exactly. The substance of such wild claims must be checked. Especially when it is said to come from a blog.
Sharon Fennell
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Leo Hickman
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@leohickman the BBC just *love* their "balance" saw it all the time in autism/vaccine discussions. Ball speaks for
Sharon Fennell
@leohickman oops! They love having famous "sciencey" spokesperson to call on. Ball hs created new role for himself. martyr status helps role
Sharon Fennell
leohickman 
sharonf So Hickman admits that he just ran with it as he had "no reason to doubt" Ball, and that checking further- or "detective work"- can be left to his readers. Now really, how long would it take to read the blog Ball talked about, search it to find the post in question, and check that he hadn't been making it up as he went along.
In Hickman's 2nd Guardian article he wrote:
Personally, I don't really want to get drawn into the nitty-gritty of how Google works, the intentions of those who build porn sites, or whether certain blogs have been deleted or not. I asked Ball to respond on these points and he did so.Why not? Hickman gave credence and lots of publicity to Ball's claims regarding these very issues. He is a respected Guardian journalist and author on environmental issues, and not some seedy hack bent on muck raking. His contribution to the propagation of these claims is substantial.
I do appreciate that he made a link available in his update article, and explained the nature of this personal blog- it's hardly capable of changing a celebrity's career. However I didn't notice an apology anywhere there for the initial oversight; just saying he took other's words in good faith and checking up is too taxing, sounds all wrong to me. The whole point of his 1st article was to condemn the claimed mistreatment of Ball. And Ball still was given a platform to repeat his lies about my blog, repeating his claim that the line "Johnny Ball should not be allowed near children" comes up on Google links and that the post was removed- all untrue.
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