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Comment by BadHumans | Hacker News Reader

> Unless otherwise noted, none of the militia members mentioned in this story responded to requests for comment

This is a serious story but this made me burst out laughing. Sorry, the PR agent for these heavily armed militias was unable to return my request for comments.

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It’s just good journalism to give everyone in a story a chance to defend their position, even if those opportunities are often not taken up.

I have seen journalists give 24 hr to defend your position. Many times it’s zero time.

I think that's bad journalism

It is. Sometimes the writer will add "didn't respond before press time" to give a little more context, but most readers won't grasp what that could really mean (like the reporter might have contacted them 15 mins before press time)

Do you have any examples of stories where one of the subjects was contacted, wanted to respond, but didn't have enough time?

Here's a current story. No idea of this news source but it is widespread. CNN is in a defamation lawsuit directly related to not waiting for a response to straighten out facts.

https://freebeacon.com/media/navy-veteran-suing-cnn-for-defa...

(To the tune of 1b in dmgs and it doesn't look good for CNN)

Well they have to strike some compromise between readers expecting timely news and story subjects responding to accusations, especially when they’re competing against the Joe Rogans of the world with no professional ethics whatsoever.

24 hours is reasonable. At the very least you can say “I will provide a response but it will take 7 days” and they can note that in the article and update later.

No time is usually reserved for breaking news. No outlet is going to hold a story on today’s building fire because the fireworks factory owner deserves 24 hours to respond.

In the recent case between the actress and the film director for ‘ it ends with us’ one of the sides gave the other a few hours to respond on the last working day of the year.

Assuming the email released is genuine, ProPublica itself recently sent a request for comment to someone by email with the line "Our deadline is in one hour".

The confusion comes from thinking these are organized groups with a solid chain of command, author seems wildly uninformed.

Most are loose gatherings of people who like shooting guns where people come and go week to week.

The one who seems confused is you, the section in the article talks about members themselves not some imaginary PR person.

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