Re: press trickery of the worst kind

[robert_mcmillan () idg com]

Hey Toralv,

I pretty much agree with you. I read a lot of stories and I agree that some
journalists suck and some go the extra mile. I think there's a real issue
with the mainstream media covering tech stories. They often just don't have
the time to get the story really right, from a technical perspective. But
still, some do an excellent job. Also, there's this real tension between
writing something in the kind of non-technical terms that everyone can
understand, and getting the story right. I'm not trying to make excuses
here -- getting things right IS the job -- but really technically savvy
sources I work with often don't understand why I can't just use a statement
that's completely accurate, but at the same time completely
incomprehensible to 99 percent of the population.

I totally respect anyone's decision to have nothing to do with journalists.
I've heard enough horror stories like Gadi's about stupid misquotes. I will
point out, however, that in other cases, people are pretty quick to cry
misquote and blame the journalist when they simply say something stupid and
their boss is suddenly on their ass.

Bottom line: I don't buy into sweeping generalizations. Why would someone
suck just because they happened to be a journalist? Makes no sense. It's
like any other profession: some people  -- hell some stories -- are good
some are not good. I guess it's just a lot more public when you're not
good.

Bob

> >
>
> Maybe you can't quote Tom with that constructed quote, but it's quite
true.
> Most journalists are looking for data, "expert" opinions, basically
> any help to get their article right. And they are happy for any help
> they can get, sometimes up to proof-reading the entire article
> before they publish it.
>
> There are some who have their story made-up and are looking for
> supporting quotes only, easy to spot during the interview, simply
> avoiding statements that can be misquoted helps (get a good media
> training, it's worth it).
>
> There are few that don't care what you said and basically make up
> quotes or put them completely out of context. You can't do much
> about them, except for blacklisting, but their are capable of taking
> your postings to public lists like funsec and chosing only the words
> they like in a post to construct a quote....

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