8 ms·

Vanity Fair reporter freak-out

118 points by apress 15y ago

racketeer 15y ago
gotta be a little oblivious to think that vanity fair is interested in stuxnet
- megamark16 15y ago
  It sounded like he was just hopeful that he could get the word out about Stuxnet. Plus, he mentions that Vanity Fair wasn't even available on German news stands, so perhaps he didn't know what to expect.
- tptacek 15y ago
  VF is in fact currently a bastion of serious long-form narrative journalism. It's hard to take seriously if you have the paper copy stinking up your hands with perfume samples, but it's a serious publication.
thezilch 15y ago
Google Cache -- English roots of langner are returning blank pages: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tPFggJcOw_MJ:www.langner.com/en/2011/03/10/vanity-fair-reporter-freak-out/+Vanity+Fair+reporter+freak-out&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tPFggJc...
- llimllib 15y ago
  Even this link is not working for me. Did anyone save the text? edit: https://gist.github.com/989727 https://gist.github.com/989727
- terio 15y ago
  That page comes out black in my browser, but the text is there, just with the wrong color. Select parts of the page and you will see it.
  - thezilch 15y ago
    Text-only version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tPFggJcOw_MJ:www.langner.com/en/2011/03/10/vanity-fair-reporter-freak-out/+Vanity+Fair+reporter+freak-out&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tPFggJc...
sedev 15y ago
This is a good example of why specialists shouldn't talk to the media. Generally, the interests of (for example) the New York Times are opposed to the interests of (for example) a particle physicist. The incentive structure of mainstream dead-tree media is aligned against producing accurate summaries of specialized information. There are some good parts and some bad parts to this. The bad parts, though, are sufficiently bad that if manipulating the media isn't your actual job, you're probably better off outsourcing that task to a trusted third party. This is basically the same as talking to lawyers and the police: they will lie to you. There will always be some technical exception so that they can tell themselves and the people higher in their authority structure that they weren't really lying, but no, from the perspective of a layperson, they're liars. They lie all the time. So you need to either be the sort of person who can cope with that and tell them the lies in return that will get something resembling your actual views and statements into their publication, or you need a specialist - just like with talking to lawyers - on your side to do that job for you. Never count on a reporter to act in good faith any more than you would count on that from the police or from a lawyer. They will disembowel you. This advice is much less applicable, happily, to technical publications in your field, or to 'citizen journalism,' but you still have to be cautious there. The major difference is that with technical publications or citizen journalists, you may have some actual leverage, and they may have some idea what you're talking about. You have no leverage, as a specialist, over the NYT, so they don't care what harm they do to you - what the heck are you going to do to them? And the average reporter for, say, Fox News, doesn't know what the heck, say, Bruce Schneier is talking about. They are worse than laypeople, actually, because they have an incentive to misunderstand. Don't talk to the mainstream media. They will lie to you, and they are not your friends.
ivank 15y ago
"My experience is that journalists report on the nearest-cliche algorithm, which is extremely uninformative because there aren’t many cliches, the truth is often quite distant from any cliche, and the only thing you can infer about the actual event was that this was the closest cliche. I should write a separate post on this at some point. It is simply not possible to appreciate the sheer awfulness of mainstream media reporting until someone has actually reported on you. It is so much worse than you think." -Eliezer Yudkowsky, http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/01/predictible-fakers.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/01/predictible-fakers.htm...
- sedev 15y ago
  "In his excellent (if a trifle dry) A History of News, one of Mitchell Stephens' insights to offer is that normal professional journalists (as opposed to that much rarer breed, investigative journalists) always "know" what the story they're going to write is going to be before they even talk to a single source. How do they do this? Stephens says that there are probably fewer than 200 stories that can be written, period, that anybody who reads or watches the news ever wants to hear. He calls these recurring news story outlines the ur-stories, meaning the primal or elemental news stories from which all later news stories are descended. So the reporter shows up at the scene of a news story with an outline of a story in their head, learned in journalism school, and all they need is three one-sentence quotes for color, and the correct spelling of each person's name. If it's an in-depth report, they go to their editor or publisher's rolodex and pull out the names of two "experts" who can be counted on to have opposing views on the subject and call each expert for another single-sentence quote. This is journalism as it is genuinely practiced." http://is.gd/XtZZcx http://is.gd/XtZZcx
- hugh3 15y ago
  On the other hand, if you hang out with journalists you'll start to see it from their side as well. They've got some short deadline to write a few thousand words on some topic they don't really understand and don't really care about, either... and the consequences for rushing out a just-good-enough article are pretty minimal. Sound familiar? It reminds me of high school, and dashing off some crappy just-good-enough essay on the night before it was due. Journalists (or the vast majority thereof) are stuck in an endless loop of having to write two crappy high school essays on different subjects every day. I don't envy them.
rudiger 15y ago
The article in question, A Declaration of Cyber-War: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/04/stuxnet-201104?printable=true http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/04/stuxnet-2... And its HN submission (1 comment): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2284385 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2284385
btilly 15y ago
My absolute favorite example of a reporter willfully twisting words is the following. A reporter was trying to interview my mother about my sister. My mother said, "It's not that we don't think you're important but ...". This wound up in print as, "It's...that we dont think you're important." Remember, it is the job of the media to get a compelling story out there. They don't care about the truth. They don't care about informing people. They want to create interesting stories that suck people in, and punish people who fail to give them access to information that they wanted (whether or not they had any right to pry). When we see subjects that we understand misreported in the media, we invariably cringe. When you see subjects you don't know anything about reported in the media, your default assumption should be that if you knew the subject better, you would cringe, and the only reason you're not cringing is that you don't know better.
- thomasgerbe 15y ago
  "Remember, it is the job of the media to get a compelling story out there. They don't care about the truth." Both Reuters and Al-Jazeera come across as attempting to be as objective as possible about the stories they cover. In fact, the former has been criticized for the policy of objective language.
  - btilly 15y ago
    I've never had the experience of interacting with Reuters or Al-Jazeera. Based on my experiences with other forms of media, I am pessimistic that they live up to their attempted reputation, but do agree that their product does seem more informative.
  - mkelly 15y ago
    It depends on the subject matter. Reuters and Al-Jazeera are by no means objective on all subjects -- the obvious example is Al-Jazeera and anything to do with Israel. (They immediately begin frothing at the mouth and spouting angry gibberish, just like, e.g., Fox news does in the US when reporting on Democrats.) But Al-Jazeera has useful reporting on other subjects. I think the key is to try to figure out who's useful for what subject matter. Vanity Fair is probably not reliable for anything.
Jun8 15y ago
This mirrors the story of McChrystal's treatment by Rolling Stone (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-runaway-general-20100622 http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-runaway-genera...). In both cases reporters pull specialists who are unaware and unprepared for the perils of such interviews to uncharted territory and then benefit from the results. I bet they can't pull such a fast one to one who's seasoned, e.g. Lady Gaga.
adrianwaj 15y ago
How gross of Gross. This is what happens when the "perception is reality" maxim gets to people's heads. Vanity Fair: Fact or Fiction?
motters 15y ago
There have been times in the distant past where I was contacted by people from the mainstream media for interviews or TV appearances on well known shows. I always politely turned them down, because I feared similar exaggerations and distortions to those described in this article. Anything connected with AI or robotics tends to be reported on very poorly and in a highly sensationalised manner, and I didn't want to end up being misrepresented or be portrayed as a crude stereotype.
tokenadult 15y ago
There is a good book, Mediasmart, http://www.amazon.com/Mediasmart-How-Handle-Reporter/dp/0964042908 http://www.amazon.com/Mediasmart-How-Handle-Reporter/dp/0964... by a reporter whose work I used to see on my local TV news, explaining how subjects of news stories can turn the tables on reporters by understanding more of the news business. The tips in the book are frank and useful--including sometimes declining to be interviewed.
staunch 15y ago
I've seen similarly bizarre malfeasance by a reporter from one of the most famous newspapers. Their fact checking is completely useless. They don't check any of the most important or fundamental claims, only the very trivial. Editors apparently don't care or are incompetent. In the case I'm intimately familiar with the reporter made no claim or attempt at impartiality. He was actively hostile and came close to threatening. He was on a witch hunt and continued his vendetta over a couple years of trumped up articles until he realized no one else bought his bullshit. I pray for the day when shitty journalists can't hide under the umbrella of a "respected" brand like Vanity Fair. It's too much power with no effective checks or balances.
kmfrk 15y ago
Here's the article formatted in ViewText: http://viewtext.org/article?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwebcache.googleusercontent.com%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dcache%3AtPFggJcOw_MJ%3Awww.langner.com%2Fen%2F2011%2F03%2F10%2Fvanity-fair-reporter-freak-out%2F%2BVanity%2BFair%2Breporter%2Bfreak-out%26cd%3D1%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus%26source%3Dwww.google.com&format= http://viewtext.org/article?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwebcache.google....
blakerobinson 15y ago
I wonder how commonplace this is across media outlets.
mmaunder 15y ago
For future reference: If you think you're being set up in an interview, in many cases you can legally record the interview using a voice recorder app on your phone without telling the other party. The only US states that require all-party notification of a conversation being recorded are: California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington. All other states allow you to record a conversation without notifying the other party provided you are party to the conversation. If the conversation crosses state lines, Federal law applies which only requires one party to know the call is being recorded. http://www.rcfp.org/taping/ http://www.rcfp.org/taping/
- tptacek 15y ago
  I'm struggling to see how that would have helped this person. The VF story is in fact not a hit piece, and involved what appears to be a multi-day interview. The audio recording required to shoot down the tiny fraction of this story Langner objects to would be very boring listening indeed --- because, of course, you'd have to trawl the whole thing to verify that he didn't crack wise about California blondes or D&G shoes.
tptacek 15y ago
Here's the graf in the VF piece that has Langner so upset: “If I did not have the background that I had, I don’t think I would have had the guts to say what I said about Stuxnet,” Langner says now, finishing his second glass of wine during lunch at a Viennese restaurant in Hamburg. Langner studied psychology and artificial intelligence at the Free University of Berlin. He fell into control systems by accident and found that he loved the fiendishly painstaking work. Every control system is like a bespoke suit made from one-of-a-kind custom fabric—tailored precisely for the conditions of that industrial installation and no other. In a profession whose members have a reputation for being unable to wear matching socks, Langner is a bona fide dandy. “My preference is for Dolce & Gabbana shoes,” he says. “Did you notice, yesterday I wore ostrich?” Langner loves the attention that his theories have gotten. He is waiting, he says, for “an American chick,” preferably a blonde, and preferably from California, to notice his blog and ask him out. This looks bad in isolation. But the piece is enormous; more than 60 grafs long. Langner's complaint makes it sound like a hit piece. It's not; it's simply using those (apparently misleading) details to add some color. The article is ostensibly not even about Langner, even though it quotes and discusses him warmly throughout. I don't want to sound like I'm defending bad reporting, but the VF articles has substantive concerns about Langner as well --- for instance, his prevalence as a authoritative source for lots of other journalism about Stuxnet --- and one way to dodge that is to redirect attention to stupid stuff like what kinds of shoes he really prefers.
- nostromo 15y ago
  Thanks for pointing that out. Here's the full article for context: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/04/stuxnet-201104?currentPage=all http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/04/stuxnet-2...
- FeelsGoodMan69 15y ago
  Is "graf" an actual term for a paragraph? Or is this some new Californian thing I haven't noticed?
  - tptacek 15y ago
    Google [graf hed lede]. I use them, as I think many other people do, because they're very easy to type, and you knew what it meant without being told. "Tk" also another great journalism shortcut; it's like "XXX" in code --- easy to search for and fix later. I'm in Chicago.
nikcub 15y ago
We rag on PR people a lot, but this is definitely a case where a tech company needed a good PR person or good PR company to back them up. A PR rep being in the room during the interviews never would have let this get out of hand in the way that it did, and they would have framed the interview better to suit the tech company. This is just a case of an unsophisticated tech guy being trodden on by an experienced journalist in order to suit the journalists goals for the story. PR might be 90% useless now, but there are good PR people out there who could have helped in this case. Btw I am a huge fan of VF but I thought the Stuxnet piece was weak. I am surprised that some of the more experienced tech journalists are not all over the story releasing articles, books, touring lecture, etc. the mainstream mass market would eat up this story in a hurry (movie deal!)
- tptacek 15y ago
  The Atlantic put Mark Bowden (for crying out loud) on Conficker and turned in a clunker. I think the problem is that a narrative journalist's instincts and pressures aren't compatible with stories like Stuxnet and Conficker.
  - nikcub 15y ago
    I remember that - it was terrible. I was thinking more like Steven Levy for Wired or even Bruce Sterling. Wired have yet to do a feature on Stuxnet or Clive Thompson for NYT Magazine - his tech writing has been excellent, particularly the Netflix prize[1] and his coverage of privacy and security issues[2] [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/magazine/23Netflix-t.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/magazine/23Netflix-t.html?... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/magazine/03intelligence.html http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/magazine/03intelligence.ht...
gburt 15y ago
There's a remarkable amount of "dramablogging" on HN lately.
- tptacek 15y ago
  New here, are you? :)
josephcooney 15y ago
More interesting (in my mind) is - why are we reading this out of the google cache? The original site doesn't seem to be up. What's the back-story there?
losethos 15y ago
Gotta be a special kinda stupid to bare false whitness.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

118 points by apress 15y ago

racketeer 15y ago

gotta be a little oblivious to think that vanity fair is interested in stuxnet

megamark16 15y ago
It sounded like he was just hopeful that he could get the word out about Stuxnet. Plus, he mentions that Vanity Fair wasn't even available on German news stands, so perhaps he didn't know what to expect.
tptacek 15y ago
VF is in fact currently a bastion of serious long-form narrative journalism. It's hard to take seriously if you have the paper copy stinking up your hands with perfume samples, but it's a serious publication.

thezilch 15y ago

Google Cache -- English roots of langner are returning blank pages: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tPFggJcOw_MJ:www.langner.com/en/2011/03/10/vanity-fair-reporter-freak-out/+Vanity+Fair+reporter+freak-out&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tPFggJc...

llimllib 15y ago
Even this link is not working for me. Did anyone save the text? edit: https://gist.github.com/989727 https://gist.github.com/989727
terio 15y ago
That page comes out black in my browser, but the text is there, just with the wrong color. Select parts of the page and you will see it.
- thezilch 15y ago
  Text-only version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tPFggJcOw_MJ:www.langner.com/en/2011/03/10/vanity-fair-reporter-freak-out/+Vanity+Fair+reporter+freak-out&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tPFggJc...

sedev 15y ago

This is a good example of why specialists shouldn't talk to the media. Generally, the interests of (for example) the New York Times are opposed to the interests of (for example) a particle physicist. The incentive structure of mainstream dead-tree media is aligned against producing accurate summaries of specialized information. There are some good parts and some bad parts to this. The bad parts, though, are sufficiently bad that if manipulating the media isn't your actual job, you're probably better off outsourcing that task to a trusted third party. This is basically the same as talking to lawyers and the police: they will lie to you. There will always be some technical exception so that they can tell themselves and the people higher in their authority structure that they weren't really lying, but no, from the perspective of a layperson, they're liars. They lie all the time. So you need to either be the sort of person who can cope with that and tell them the lies in return that will get something resembling your actual views and statements into their publication, or you need a specialist - just like with talking to lawyers - on your side to do that job for you. Never count on a reporter to act in good faith any more than you would count on that from the police or from a lawyer. They will disembowel you. This advice is much less applicable, happily, to technical publications in your field, or to 'citizen journalism,' but you still have to be cautious there. The major difference is that with technical publications or citizen journalists, you may have some actual leverage, and they may have some idea what you're talking about. You have no leverage, as a specialist, over the NYT, so they don't care what harm they do to you - what the heck are you going to do to them? And the average reporter for, say, Fox News, doesn't know what the heck, say, Bruce Schneier is talking about. They are worse than laypeople, actually, because they have an incentive to misunderstand. Don't talk to the mainstream media. They will lie to you, and they are not your friends.

ivank 15y ago

"My experience is that journalists report on the nearest-cliche algorithm, which is extremely uninformative because there aren’t many cliches, the truth is often quite distant from any cliche, and the only thing you can infer about the actual event was that this was the closest cliche. I should write a separate post on this at some point. It is simply not possible to appreciate the sheer awfulness of mainstream media reporting until someone has actually reported on you. It is so much worse than you think." -Eliezer Yudkowsky, http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/01/predictible-fakers.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/01/predictible-fakers.htm...

sedev 15y ago
"In his excellent (if a trifle dry) A History of News, one of Mitchell Stephens' insights to offer is that normal professional journalists (as opposed to that much rarer breed, investigative journalists) always "know" what the story they're going to write is going to be before they even talk to a single source. How do they do this? Stephens says that there are probably fewer than 200 stories that can be written, period, that anybody who reads or watches the news ever wants to hear. He calls these recurring news story outlines the ur-stories, meaning the primal or elemental news stories from which all later news stories are descended. So the reporter shows up at the scene of a news story with an outline of a story in their head, learned in journalism school, and all they need is three one-sentence quotes for color, and the correct spelling of each person's name. If it's an in-depth report, they go to their editor or publisher's rolodex and pull out the names of two "experts" who can be counted on to have opposing views on the subject and call each expert for another single-sentence quote. This is journalism as it is genuinely practiced." http://is.gd/XtZZcx http://is.gd/XtZZcx
hugh3 15y ago
On the other hand, if you hang out with journalists you'll start to see it from their side as well. They've got some short deadline to write a few thousand words on some topic they don't really understand and don't really care about, either... and the consequences for rushing out a just-good-enough article are pretty minimal. Sound familiar? It reminds me of high school, and dashing off some crappy just-good-enough essay on the night before it was due. Journalists (or the vast majority thereof) are stuck in an endless loop of having to write two crappy high school essays on different subjects every day. I don't envy them.

rudiger 15y ago

The article in question, A Declaration of Cyber-War: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/04/stuxnet-201104?printable=true http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/04/stuxnet-2... And its HN submission (1 comment): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2284385 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2284385

btilly 15y ago

My absolute favorite example of a reporter willfully twisting words is the following. A reporter was trying to interview my mother about my sister. My mother said, "It's not that we don't think you're important but ...". This wound up in print as, "It's...that we dont think you're important." Remember, it is the job of the media to get a compelling story out there. They don't care about the truth. They don't care about informing people. They want to create interesting stories that suck people in, and punish people who fail to give them access to information that they wanted (whether or not they had any right to pry). When we see subjects that we understand misreported in the media, we invariably cringe. When you see subjects you don't know anything about reported in the media, your default assumption should be that if you knew the subject better, you would cringe, and the only reason you're not cringing is that you don't know better.

thomasgerbe 15y ago
"Remember, it is the job of the media to get a compelling story out there. They don't care about the truth." Both Reuters and Al-Jazeera come across as attempting to be as objective as possible about the stories they cover. In fact, the former has been criticized for the policy of objective language.
- btilly 15y ago
  I've never had the experience of interacting with Reuters or Al-Jazeera. Based on my experiences with other forms of media, I am pessimistic that they live up to their attempted reputation, but do agree that their product does seem more informative.
- mkelly 15y ago
  It depends on the subject matter. Reuters and Al-Jazeera are by no means objective on all subjects -- the obvious example is Al-Jazeera and anything to do with Israel. (They immediately begin frothing at the mouth and spouting angry gibberish, just like, e.g., Fox news does in the US when reporting on Democrats.) But Al-Jazeera has useful reporting on other subjects. I think the key is to try to figure out who's useful for what subject matter. Vanity Fair is probably not reliable for anything.

Jun8 15y ago

This mirrors the story of McChrystal's treatment by Rolling Stone (http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-runaway-general-20100622 http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-runaway-genera...). In both cases reporters pull specialists who are unaware and unprepared for the perils of such interviews to uncharted territory and then benefit from the results. I bet they can't pull such a fast one to one who's seasoned, e.g. Lady Gaga.

adrianwaj 15y ago

How gross of Gross. This is what happens when the "perception is reality" maxim gets to people's heads. Vanity Fair: Fact or Fiction?

motters 15y ago

There have been times in the distant past where I was contacted by people from the mainstream media for interviews or TV appearances on well known shows. I always politely turned them down, because I feared similar exaggerations and distortions to those described in this article. Anything connected with AI or robotics tends to be reported on very poorly and in a highly sensationalised manner, and I didn't want to end up being misrepresented or be portrayed as a crude stereotype.

tokenadult 15y ago

There is a good book, Mediasmart, http://www.amazon.com/Mediasmart-How-Handle-Reporter/dp/0964042908 http://www.amazon.com/Mediasmart-How-Handle-Reporter/dp/0964... by a reporter whose work I used to see on my local TV news, explaining how subjects of news stories can turn the tables on reporters by understanding more of the news business. The tips in the book are frank and useful--including sometimes declining to be interviewed.

staunch 15y ago

I've seen similarly bizarre malfeasance by a reporter from one of the most famous newspapers. Their fact checking is completely useless. They don't check any of the most important or fundamental claims, only the very trivial. Editors apparently don't care or are incompetent. In the case I'm intimately familiar with the reporter made no claim or attempt at impartiality. He was actively hostile and came close to threatening. He was on a witch hunt and continued his vendetta over a couple years of trumped up articles until he realized no one else bought his bullshit. I pray for the day when shitty journalists can't hide under the umbrella of a "respected" brand like Vanity Fair. It's too much power with no effective checks or balances.

kmfrk 15y ago

Here's the article formatted in ViewText: http://viewtext.org/article?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwebcache.googleusercontent.com%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dcache%3AtPFggJcOw_MJ%3Awww.langner.com%2Fen%2F2011%2F03%2F10%2Fvanity-fair-reporter-freak-out%2F%2BVanity%2BFair%2Breporter%2Bfreak-out%26cd%3D1%26hl%3Den%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dus%26source%3Dwww.google.com&format= http://viewtext.org/article?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwebcache.google....

blakerobinson 15y ago

I wonder how commonplace this is across media outlets.

mmaunder 15y ago

For future reference: If you think you're being set up in an interview, in many cases you can legally record the interview using a voice recorder app on your phone without telling the other party. The only US states that require all-party notification of a conversation being recorded are: California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington. All other states allow you to record a conversation without notifying the other party provided you are party to the conversation. If the conversation crosses state lines, Federal law applies which only requires one party to know the call is being recorded. http://www.rcfp.org/taping/ http://www.rcfp.org/taping/

tptacek 15y ago
I'm struggling to see how that would have helped this person. The VF story is in fact not a hit piece, and involved what appears to be a multi-day interview. The audio recording required to shoot down the tiny fraction of this story Langner objects to would be very boring listening indeed --- because, of course, you'd have to trawl the whole thing to verify that he didn't crack wise about California blondes or D&G shoes.

tptacek 15y ago

Here's the graf in the VF piece that has Langner so upset: “If I did not have the background that I had, I don’t think I would have had the guts to say what I said about Stuxnet,” Langner says now, finishing his second glass of wine during lunch at a Viennese restaurant in Hamburg. Langner studied psychology and artificial intelligence at the Free University of Berlin. He fell into control systems by accident and found that he loved the fiendishly painstaking work. Every control system is like a bespoke suit made from one-of-a-kind custom fabric—tailored precisely for the conditions of that industrial installation and no other. In a profession whose members have a reputation for being unable to wear matching socks, Langner is a bona fide dandy. “My preference is for Dolce & Gabbana shoes,” he says. “Did you notice, yesterday I wore ostrich?” Langner loves the attention that his theories have gotten. He is waiting, he says, for “an American chick,” preferably a blonde, and preferably from California, to notice his blog and ask him out. This looks bad in isolation. But the piece is enormous; more than 60 grafs long. Langner's complaint makes it sound like a hit piece. It's not; it's simply using those (apparently misleading) details to add some color. The article is ostensibly not even about Langner, even though it quotes and discusses him warmly throughout. I don't want to sound like I'm defending bad reporting, but the VF articles has substantive concerns about Langner as well --- for instance, his prevalence as a authoritative source for lots of other journalism about Stuxnet --- and one way to dodge that is to redirect attention to stupid stuff like what kinds of shoes he really prefers.

nostromo 15y ago
Thanks for pointing that out. Here's the full article for context: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/04/stuxnet-201104?currentPage=all http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/04/stuxnet-2...
FeelsGoodMan69 15y ago
Is "graf" an actual term for a paragraph? Or is this some new Californian thing I haven't noticed?
- tptacek 15y ago
  Google [graf hed lede]. I use them, as I think many other people do, because they're very easy to type, and you knew what it meant without being told. "Tk" also another great journalism shortcut; it's like "XXX" in code --- easy to search for and fix later. I'm in Chicago.

nikcub 15y ago

We rag on PR people a lot, but this is definitely a case where a tech company needed a good PR person or good PR company to back them up. A PR rep being in the room during the interviews never would have let this get out of hand in the way that it did, and they would have framed the interview better to suit the tech company. This is just a case of an unsophisticated tech guy being trodden on by an experienced journalist in order to suit the journalists goals for the story. PR might be 90% useless now, but there are good PR people out there who could have helped in this case. Btw I am a huge fan of VF but I thought the Stuxnet piece was weak. I am surprised that some of the more experienced tech journalists are not all over the story releasing articles, books, touring lecture, etc. the mainstream mass market would eat up this story in a hurry (movie deal!)

tptacek 15y ago
The Atlantic put Mark Bowden (for crying out loud) on Conficker and turned in a clunker. I think the problem is that a narrative journalist's instincts and pressures aren't compatible with stories like Stuxnet and Conficker.
- nikcub 15y ago
  I remember that - it was terrible. I was thinking more like Steven Levy for Wired or even Bruce Sterling. Wired have yet to do a feature on Stuxnet or Clive Thompson for NYT Magazine - his tech writing has been excellent, particularly the Netflix prize[1] and his coverage of privacy and security issues[2] [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/magazine/23Netflix-t.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/magazine/23Netflix-t.html?... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/magazine/03intelligence.html http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/magazine/03intelligence.ht...

gburt 15y ago

There's a remarkable amount of "dramablogging" on HN lately.

tptacek 15y ago
New here, are you? :)

josephcooney 15y ago

More interesting (in my mind) is - why are we reading this out of the google cache? The original site doesn't seem to be up. What's the back-story there?

losethos 15y ago

Gotta be a special kinda stupid to bare false whitness.

deleted 15y ago

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