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I once had a telephone interview with a journalist. I made some silly remark, followed with "don't print that".

Both the remark and the "don't print that" were printed in the article.

And you learned a lesson in how reporting works.

Of course. Now I take questions in writing, and respond in writing. It's less work for the journalist, too, as they don't have to spend time transcribing a recording.

You can't take back what you've said while on-the-record (you are on-the-record unless you have jointly agreed otherwise... not to mention clearly agree on what 'on background' or 'off-the-record' means to each of you).

Next time, seriously, read up on or take some media training before speaking with a journalist unless you are open to your words being repeated, summarized, abbreviated, etc.

Generally, the journalist does not owe you to follow you instructions, just as any other person. They might do it if they want to be nice, or cooperative with you, or like you, or owe you loyalty somehow, or count on repeated cooperation in the future. So I guess the question one needs to ask oneself is - does this particular person, acting as a journalist, owes me any loyalty or has a special reason to feel they have to be nice to me? If not, expect nothing - anything you say can and will be used however they see fit, just as in any other conversation with a total stranger. Just because somebody calls themselves "journalist" doesn't make them any different.

> they will cherry pick my words or "summarize the source" to fit their narrative

They can't show you their articles, but you can ask them about their angle. If you disagree, it's fine to say "I don't want to be a part of that". If they trust you, they'll ask why not. If you have a proper argument, you'll flip their angle. (I have.) If you have a flimsy argument, and they respect you, they'll tell you why they disagree. And now you have a proper discussion, which I find is much more interesting than answering a series of questions.

An important component is to have recurring value. If you're a one-off source, you'll have a bad time. If you can convince them you're of long-term value, now you have mutual leverage.

I tried that once. Their angle agreed with mine. Until the article came out and it had flipped. So either they flipped their angle after we spoke or they lied to me.

Did you read their work before agreeing to an interview? (Asking because I’ve made that mistake. It’s my preference to choose my journalists rather than the other way around.)

Why go through all this effort dancing around like this? I mean why bother talking to them in the first place if they're going to be so obtuse?

> I won't talk to journalists anymore.

That was OP's conclusion

> An important component is to have recurring value. If you're a one-off source, you'll have a bad time. If you can convince them you're of long-term value, now you have mutual leverage.

So for the average person who might get contacted by a journalist once, infrequently, or rarely, probably the best advice is: do not talk to journalists.

If you're planning on making a career out of publicly airing your opinions in a professional capacity you'll probably want to intensively study how to deal with journalists.

A few years ago, I was assaulted after a fashion. (The event could have caused permanent injury, even though it wasn't actually intended.) A friend of mine was a reporter for a local paper, and she asked if she could do a piece on it. I thought it'd be OK, since she wouldn't want to ruin me.

Funny thing.

She changed my position from "I could have been permanently injured!" to "I want all of those potential weapons removed from the state!"

Like you, I won't be talking to journalists again.

I also wish journalists would interview experts as you're describing, but I think this "why in the world would you not want to" sentiment is easily explained by looking at the incentives of journalists v.s. what you're trying to do as a responsible source, they don't align.

Journalists in general have a much larger incentive to cut down two accurate paragraphs to one less accurate (or even misleading one), after all they're competing in a market where people's eyes will glaze over a tweet because it's too long.

Furthermore, even supposedly responsible publications and papers of record have an incentive for sensationalism. Your level-headed summary of an event may not align with their editorial prerogatives.

Maybe the solution is to interview journalists like employees, journalists that can show examples of work that quoted sources accurately and completely combined with checking that source as a reference to see how they felt about the result should land you and the journalist in a good place. Align your interests. Good papers want good journalists that produce accurate content and can get sources, so do you.

> Good papers want good journalists that produce accurate content and can get sources, so do you.

For some definitions of good. I'm not convinced your definition of good and news organisations definition of good align well.

News organisations want to publish articles that will drive ad spend and subscriptions. You want to read articles that are factually accurate and quote original sources in full verbatim.

To expand a bit, if both sides did their due diligence 'bad' reporters wouldn't get sources. That is if sources vetted reporters then maintaining that reputation would be the only thing that got them high quality sources and then news sources that prioritized accuracy would have competitive advantage.

We have this already, in a less good light, reporters/news orgs building "good" relationships with people or companies and biasing their coverage in favor of the covered to maintain that good relationship. It sours the view of the news source when you start to see frequent hit pieces or undue praise of a subject that is a clear mark of a paper with an agenda.

It's not even editorial prerogatives; it's narrative. Newspaper stories - they're called stories for a reason. Stories need structure and internal consistency. Ambiguity and incomplete information are upsetting to the reader.

Sure, the more emotive a story is, the better chance it has of spreading, but it doesn't need to be sensationalist - it just needs to engage the reader on multiple levels. There are different kinds of emotions you can hit in the reader that don't rely on sensational reporting. Appealing to a sense of tribal belonging is a particularly strong one these days.

> when you contact me asking me to explain a technical topic in detail because you don't understand it, why in the world would you not want to show me the article before publication

Have you asked? What did they say? That would be interesting to learn. I don't feel that more expressions of outrage on the Internet are valuable to me; goodness knows we have had enough of those!

IME, usually quality publications get the facts right (and as importantly, they are not wrong in regard to the subtleties) on technical topics in which I have expertise. They might not go in depth enough to interest me, but if I have expertise then I'm not the audience.

In areas where I don't have expertise, I rarely see quality publications get important facts wrong, based on future reporting and on non-partisan, outside experts, though of course no human effort is perfect.

I discussed with what seemed to be ex-journalists here.

IIRC the question was why people hesitated to explain anything to journalists.

I earned myself a few downvotes and it seemed they agreed I wasn't to bright && probably had something to hide