[964] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Privitization is the issue today
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Barry Shein)
Fri Jul 12 14:42:23 1991
Date: Fri, 12 Jul 91 14:20:40 -0400
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
To: rma@tsar.cc.rochester.edu
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Richard Mandelbaum's message of Fri, 12 Jul 91 12:35:31 -0400 <9107121635.AA16342@tsar.cc.rochester.edu>
>From: Richard Mandelbaum <rma@tsar.cc.rochester.edu>
>Without getting bogged down in a discussion of Joe Abernathy's piece,
>I think it is ludicrous for us to say,
>"We didn't like what you wrote so we won't speak to you ever again"
>
>Is that a reasonable way to insure that we get good reporting in the future?
I don't understand, no one was speaking in the general, "we won't
speak to any member of the press again", it was just Abernathy (and
perhaps the Houston Chronicle.)
There are plenty, dozens, of high-tech journalists and publications
out there who do a responsible job.
If Weekly World News called me to comment on rumors about aliens
posting to the net I might demur also (then I again, I'd probably jump
at the opportunity :-) I don't consider that all that far from
Abernathy's stuff. I found his response on this group even more
disturbing, basically telling us we were too dumb to realize what a
great job he really did, a mild "perhaps we can discuss what upset
y'all" would have gone a long way at that point. Too late.
There was a period (back around 1987) that one of the major
communications weeklies was being absurdly pro-OSI/anti-TCP in every
issue and they would twist statements and misrepresent the slightest
bit of non-news to their purpose. This was discussed extensively on
some network lists at the time and the general consensus was that they
weren't engaging in reporting but, rather, a mindless and embarrassing
crusade (I assume by one of their editors.) According to them TCP was
long-dead by 1990, etc. It wasn't the opinion though, it was the gross
and willful inaccuracies and misrepresentations that had people
hopping, lots of people had the opinion that OSI would be further
along by now, let's not get off on that tangent.
We should cooperate with the press, but that is a two way street. We,
as the experts, also have a responsibility to the public to try to get
what we have to say out there accurately. C'mon, one chooses carefully
what journals and conferences to submit to also, I'm not saying
anything that isn't obvious. We can demand quality.
>By the way the idea of a reporter as opposed to say a biographer giving
>one preaproval rights on a story he/she has written seems as ludicrous as
>the idea of having appropriate usage guidelines based on content.
It's not "pre-approval" rights, it's an opportunity to check for gross
inaccuracies, misquotes and misrepresentations.
All that usually occurs is you get a copy of all or much of the
article with your quotes and respond (typically via phone.) You don't
have any "rights", you just expect to be taken seriously if you say
something like "you must have screwed up your notes, I didn't say
anything like that, here's a useable quote". And the reporter can take
it or leave it (e.g. if s/he decides that you're backpeddling you may
well see it in print anyhow, but real mistakes do occur.)
Most responsible reporters I have dealt with do this as a matter of
course. They realize that it usually improves the accuracy of their
article (not to mention keeping sources open.) In the end they and
their editors are the final arbiters of what goes in, them's the rules
(and they take their knocks, which is what we're discussing here, they
know well the risks of bad reporting.)
-Barry Shein
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