A Warning to the Tech Community on Abusive Journalists | Hacker News Reader

A Warning to the Tech Community on Abusive Journalists

zdziarski.com

66 pointsjzdziarski29 comments

"Another way to tell a good journalist is to tell them you’d like a chance to review the story, to double check it for factual errors, prior to publishing it. If they decline, or claim that their news agency has rules against this, then you’re possibly dealing with a journalist who doesn’t care about the facts, and possibly is even trying to blame his/her news agency for it."

More or less no newspaper will do this. Reputable newspapers will have fact-checkers who will verify stated facts and direct quotes but giving people sight of the finished article before publication is something that no-one does.

Yes, I think several of the entities with rules against this are the largest mainstream daily newspapers in the United States. The Washington Post and the Associated Press have been reported to have this policy, for example.

I have taken a course in journalism some years ago and I can testify that it's a common practice in Belgium. And I think it's a good thing.

Indeed – Imagine a newspaper has just interviewed a city official suspected of corruption. What but the most obsequious editorial staff would give the official a final look at the story before it goes to press?

I am a former editor (newspapers and magazines) and now work in tech. No reputable media outlet that I know of would permit prior review -- that is, allowing a source to see a story before it's published. And indeed, doing so could get a reporter in very hot water, if not fired.

So how do reporters, editors, and media outlets make sure that they get their facts right? By doing some of the things suggested -- confirming statements of fact, asking for clarification, and sometimes repeating back a short quote to make sure they haven't misheard anything.

But to allow a source to read the whole thing before publication goes way beyond confirming statements of fact.

At the first magazine I worked at, I had the liberty of being able to call up sources as I was working on a piece. I would typically pick out any statements of fact that they had made during our interviews and restate the fact, asking them to confirm each statement.

There are typically two kinds of objections, and you don't hear either of them very frequently. One is "that's factually inaccurate." Those are the easiest to clear up. The other is, "I never said that!" That's generally not an objection to a statement of fact; it's an objection to a statement of opinion that the person regrets making, or a lie that they have been caught in. I can remember one time that I had a disputed quote on a cassette recorder; we ran with it. Another time, I had only my handwritten notes, and we decided it wasn't worth the risk.

As for this particular blog post, anytime I hear someone accuse a scribe of slandering them or a television/radio reporter of libeling them, I take their accusation with a grain of salt. If you don't know the difference between slander and libel, you probably don't know what constitutes either.

> I am a former editor (newspapers and magazines) and now work in tech. No reputable media outlet that I know of would permit prior review -- that is, allowing a source to see a story before it's published.

Perhaps in the past. You can find many stories about, for example, politicians in DC who require exactly that as a condition for access. They even would insist on rewriting quotes. It was a big deal in 2012 when the NY Times and a few others made a policy decision to restrict (but not eliminate IIRC) such deals with sources.[1] Note that these publications were allowing such deals until then -- and if the NY Times and Reuters are doing it, imagine what the standards of your local paper are.

Some attribute it to the rise of the Internet. Sources aren't as dependent on the the professional news media to get their stories out. If the NY Times won't agree to the terms, maybe BuzzFeed or Red State or someone else will, or the source can publish on their own website, or on the website of a publication they own.[2]

People like to criticize the professional news media, and certainly it has its faults. But we will miss it when it's gone.

[1] http://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/in-new-poli...

[2] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/937b06c2-3ebd-11e4-adef-00144feabd...

>More or less no newspaper will do this. Reputable newspapers will have fact-checkers who will verify stated facts and direct quotes but giving people sight of the finished article before publication is something that no-one does.

No newspaper in the US. It is standard procedure for german newspapers to ask the interviewed for "authorisation" of the transcript before publishing anything. The german journalists association distanced itself from this practice more than a decade ago, [0] but it's still very common. This comes with all the problems you would imagine, especially a tendency for soft-ball questions.

Some journalists tried to draw attention to this issue by publishing a "redacted" version of interviews [1], but at the end of the day, if single journalists or entire newspapers refuse to follow the unwritten rules, they may find themselves out of interview partners very quickly [2][3].

[0]http://www.vap-deutschland.org/beitritt-en.php

[1]http://www.journalist.de/fileadmin/Bilder/Handwerk_und_Beruf...

[2]http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/medien/autorisierung-v...

[3]http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jul/16/us-campaigns-qu...

Maybe in your country. In Norway it's normal. The (few) times I've been interviewed I've gotten the full story by mail before publishing or a phone call.

I work for a student newspaper now, and last week we even implemented a feature to automate the sending of unpublished articles to our sources.

When I wrote professionally, sources I had recorded on microtape (obviously with their permission) saying something would often complain that they didn't say what was recorded.

This is, sadly, what happens when you mistake today's "journalism" (public relations) for journalism.

They're not interested in stories, per se - they're interested in enhancing their "personal brand", the brands that pay them to get them coverage, and the brands that their media agency contractually demands they support. Stories are just a vehicle to that end.

This applies more than to just tech. One of my friends was interviewed by a reporter for Time about a chiptune album he worked on, and he had nothing but gushing praise for chiptunes - somehow the reporter twisted his words and even made up stuff that he did not say to slander the production style. Even when he messaged her to correct it, she did not remove the lies completely until he started a Twitter campaign amongst his connections to cry foul about the egregious misreporting, and threatened a Digg post (while Digg was still popular) - only then she relented.

These are lessons in being careful who you talk to. Din't let out more information than you feel you need to unless you trust them, as a guard against unscrupulous people.

I wouldn't limit this to Journalists.

It's solid advice for dealing with most anyone, particularly people with any sort of 'power' over your work and decisions.

With slight modification, these are the same sort of red flags to note precautions to take when dealing with a manager, executive or customer.

I think managing the expectations of non/semi-technical people and taking care in the way we evaluate and represent each other's work to those people is an important, but often overlooked part of this business.

Strange - I just clicked on the link and got a CloudFlare page, checking my browser for "compatibility" and DDOS, before loading the actual site.

Anyone else getting that?

That's what sometimes happens when HN frontpage DDOSes a webpage that is protected by CloudFlare. It's just checking to see if you're a "legitimate" visitor or an automated bot.

Yes. I get it on some other sites too. It's fine, CloudFlare sets a cookie and doesn't bother you again but it fails to redirect me to the exact url and just loads up the main page.

I don't think anyone has any illusions anymore that journalism as a means of informing the reader is at best dying, if not already dead. If a news organization can lie, then there is no point in in reading news, because fictitious news has no value to the reader. Throw in the polarization and sensationalism between the absurd right and left political extremes, and you have theater, not news.

I now follow journalists that I've vetted and trust to some extent, and heavily use sites like this to help filter the nonsense. I'll skim BBC and Al Jezeria English, but even them, I withhold opinion until I can get a sense of accuracy and corroboration.

I feel Apple may have the best approach. Comment on nothing, release press releases, and only conduct interviews with vetted reporters.

I waded through this swamp of words and all I get from it is that the author is angry because a journalist was mean to him.

I thought it was quite well written and informative. I can't comment on the veracity of the post though as I know nothing about the author.

You need to learn to read then.

There is a difference between being angry and borderline/actual harassment. Ignoring requests to cease contact and calling someone racist without cause are crossing a line from the former into the latter. And those actions coming from a "professional" is enough to warrant a letter to this individuals boss.

This writer seems to have just cause, and despite a relative wall-o-text, makes his case rather thoughtfully.

Yeah, I dunno why his writing screams self-promoting crank to me, but something about it does. He's been posted here before, and he's a big deal in the ios security community. According to him.

That's some great revisionist history. I find it laughable that he says he never tries to mislead when he did exactly that with his presentation. He then tried to blame it on the press that covered it, but really he got the reaction he wanted. Violet Blue's piece was spot on.

Oh, hi Violet!

While interesting, I found it interesting that Mr. Zdziarski libels that the original article by Violet Blue on ZDnet was written in angst over his religious views despite no evidence other than a few loose tweets unrelated to him or his religious views. http://www.zdnet.com/the-apple-backdoor-that-wasnt-700003178...

> News agencies rarely hold their own writers accountable, especially in tech, where misogyny and misandry thrive, and where personal attacks generate headlines.

We've reached a new low in name-calling and FUD-spreading if one feels the need to use both misogyny and misandry in the same statement. At least, I cannot think of any reason not to use "people-hating" instead other than for dramatic effect (eliciting strong emotions from the reader).

Some are misogynist, some are misandrist. Not both at the same time.

There are those who identify as neither male nor female, and who furthermore are biased against both. (That's probably not what the article was talking about, but it is theoretically possible.)

I would like to note that I'm not accusing all people in that category of bias, only noting that it's a phenomenon that exists. Misogyny and misandry are not as incompatible of ideas as they seem. (For those who think this observation is downvote-worthy, I'd love an explanation.)

Expecting men to adhere to the "burly, hairy bread-winner" stereotype is misandristic in the same way that expecting women to "stay in the kitchen" is misogynistic, and those expectations often correlate. They're both cases of holding people to artificial standards.

"I cannot think of any reason not to use "people-hating" instead other than for dramatic effect"

Same reason you wouldn't shorten "Bob and Santa Claus" to "two people": the second subject is a childish fantasy utterly unrelated to reality...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com