Comment by jsprinkles | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jsprinkles | Hacker News Reader

The armchair lawyer in me cringed reading this entry. Black Rock's lawyers could swoop in and eat the author for lunch, given the legally-strong words he's throwing around in his prose. This is dangerous, dangerous territory and take heed, folks; any chance you have for legal recourse in a case such as this is completely and irrevocably undermined by temperamental writing in the heat of the moment. This has liability written all over it for the author, in fact, and one should really think twice before squaring off against a legal team that has been in the trenches against all of big tobacco for the very same program.

Morley Safer is one of the old guard, one of the few journalists (the traditional meaning, not a blogger) left who has actually seen Vietnam. His work on 60 Minutes is, typically, quite strong, and he has doubtlessly been on 60 Minutes longer than this person has been alive. I find myself siding with Safer here instead of this blogger, and that's even with a deep-seated distaste for the media these days; that's merely on the credibility that 60 Minutes has established, in my mind, and I really hope the author is prepared for many people with similar mindset to mine.

Namedropping your blog on Forbes isn't something that gives weight to your argument, since they've been comically easy to get for the last couple of years (troubling for Forbes's image, in my opinion). I don't think this entry will have the effect the author intended, as I'm more prone to indict the author instead of the person he wanted me to condemn.

EDIT: Clarifying a remark that confused my intent.

The blog post makes a substantive charge of journalistic misconduct against 60 Minutes and includes evidence supporting the charge. What do Vietnam and Morely Safer's age have to do with it? Why are you siding with anyone if you haven't seen the evidence? Are you too lazy* to watch the video, yet nonetheless possessed of a need to share your opinion about it?

What, exactly, do you want to accomplish with this comment?

* EDIT: this is inappropriately unpleasant language on my part, I apologize

> Why are you siding with anyone if you haven't seen the evidence?

Why are you assuming I haven't? Anybody that disagrees with the author automatically hasn't done the necessary research, in your mind?

I appealed to Morley Safer's incredibly long history with the program for a specific reason. The author of this piece charges 60 Minutes with slander, which is a very big word, and journalists don't have multi-decade careers when they're stupid enough to open up their company to claims of slander. Particularly on a (to them) relatively unimportant story.

Because you did not engage at all with the facts of this specific complaint. You still have not done so.

It's not clear what a long career in broadcasting has to do with any of this. You're talking about credibility. Credibility has it's place, but it's a heuristic for evaluating claims in the absence of facts. When the facts are available it counts for nothing.

If you want to know whether it's raining outside, don't ask Morley Safer--look out the window.

You completely missed the point of my comment. I am completely noncommittal on this specific allegation, and my comment remains a generality. You clearly read it and assumed I implied the author is wrong or that I disagree with the allegations, which I most certainly did not.

I reacted to the presence of words like slander, which is an entirely different ballgame from accusing Morley Safer of skewing the truth. Slander is a big, legally-actionable word, and you don't bang that drum unless you're ready to march behind it. My point about siding with Safer is that due to his credibility, I'm prejudiced to his side even before being told of this issue.

Nowhere in my comment did I address this specific issue.

I agree that slander is too strong a word. In my opinion a class on business networking sounds a lot like learning to shake hands and make eye contact. Safer trivialized the class, but it hardly rises to the level of slander.

At first I thought that you were veering into dangerous chair by armchair lawyering, but then I read the article. It is borderline libel (meaning that a jury could find the statements libelous). [Note: For legal purposes, libel is written/published while slander is spoken and they have different material elements but they otherwise refer to the same concept.]

Also, curiously, other than accusing Safer of outright lying, the article does not actual refute anything that Safer claims. Safer notes that Thiels fellows are provided social instruction (specifically, "networking skills"), but that clip is merely an aside to a longer video piece on the nature of the fellowships themselves and place in the national discussion on education.

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