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Journalists are addicted to attribution. Before Twitter, they had to call people for quotes verifying or denying something. The tradition was 2 sources to verif
by ogou 3y ago
Journalists are addicted to attribution. Before Twitter, they had to call people for quotes verifying or denying something. The tradition was 2 sources to verify. There was even a time that anonymous sources were frowned on. If they couldn't get them on the phone, they had to track them down and ask in person. That's why there are multiple scenes in "All the President's Men" where the reporters are knocking on doors at people's houses at night.
All that is old school now and replaced by the quick drug-like hit of posting "so-and-so tweeted". It's enough to write about a post of some kind and not actually get comments or context from anybody else, because there always posts for "opponents say" or "advocates say".
I was a web developer for a newspaper and knew they were doomed when they started writing articles about their own comments section.
Implication and notoriety rule the day.
- oefrha 3y ago> Journalists are addicted to attribution. Having actually been the subject of news stories a few times (appearing in multiple papers each time), I doubt that. Journalists managed to shuffle quotes around people, e.g. putting my words in someone else’s mouth or someone else’s in mine, or creatively edited what I said and hence distorting it (published inside double quotes of course), even though I gave all of them a printed document of everything I said in the interview and more.
- ogou 3y agoYou're conflating attribution and accuracy. They found in you someone to attribute the statements to, but didn't do it accurately. Quoting someone is a special kind of deflection of responsibility. Same if it's a verbal quote or a tweet.
- soco 3y agoWas this happening in ye olden times before Twitter, or was caused by today's "journalism" at its best? (quotes are mine)
- oefrha 3y agoThe old times, before the make-a-clickbait-story-out-of-a-random-tweet-and-verify-nothing era, though two cases happened after the literal advent of Twitter.