[Seattle-editorial] RE: hey Gentry

[jonathan lawson]

Making community-based editorial judgements about how to contextualize 
significant postings to the newswire (including ones that mysteriously 
disappear) is not bad journalism as you suggest. The real lesson about 
journalism here is about the consequences of reporting potentially 
explosive secondhand rumors as news.

Also, incidentally, while I have no desire to complicate the court cases of 
any of the arrestees, who I have a lot of respect for, we as journalists 
cannot act as though anyone who becomes the subject of a newswire post 
should be allowed to dictate changes to a posting. Comments can add 
corrections or additional context; on very rare occasions we can take more 
serious action when there is a legal problem. But we have to take the "I" 
in IMC seriously.

Gentry, you've been managing the fallout from this story, and I imagine you 
have been keeping tabs on where it's been posted, etc. If you want to 
remove that section of the feature, it's ok with me--the only reason I 
included the info at all was to try to do what you're trying to 
do--minimize the damage done by the original post.

Jonathan

editorial member who takes his job seriously

At 03:35 PM 6/9/2003 -0700, Gentry Lange wrote:
>No, but I was contacted by the folks arrested and told to remove the story
>for legal reasons pertaining to their prosecution. To keep mentioning it is
>apparently not going to help them out... And as the source is mum, and mine
>is only 2nd hand information, I feel it is both against their wishes to keep
>discussing it, and not particularly good journalism, as it is
>unsubstantiated by anyone other than me at this point. Without their
>statements and further support, I might as well just have made it up. Not
>that I did.
>
>To me it goes against a request made to me by the activists involved, and
>could make their legal problems worse. Besides that, all attempts to verify
>the account have proven fruitless. They were officially arraigned on felony
>burglary charges, and no official sources can prove the original
>allegations. My objection is that at this point this is a rumor, however,
>there are quotes around the words "flagged for possible links to terrorist
>organizations." This makes it sound as if there is a source for this
>statement which there is not at this point.
>
>Gentry