[Seattle-editorial] RE: Seattle-editorial Digest, Vol 1, Issue 845

[jl at u.washington.edu]

Gentry,

I appreciate the full explanation, and the thought you have put into all of this. 

As for changing the feature, I reiterate what I said before--now that we've discussed this, please feel free to remove/edit the feature to correct any mistaken impressions. All these features are at least theoretically collectively authored.

BTW, features are commonly compiled without contacting authors of stories to confirm details, usually because the authors are anonymous or unreachable. There are exceptions--I have done independent research for features several times. But mainly editorial writers have to trust their own judgement about whether a story is credible or not, and be careful about what words we are simply reporting versus what we are attributing to the authors of posts, as we did in this case with the quotation in the feature. The fact that the author of the post had retracted the statement wasn't in dispute-in fact that was the whole point of mentioning it.


Interesting lessons learned here, which will hopefully keep thins from happening again. I still think your "bad journalism" critique is pretty weak, given all I did was quote your statement in the context of saying that it was unconfirmed and withdrawn (i.e. unlikely to be true). As I see it, there were two possible responses to the occurence after you were asked to retract: (1) try to erase the original statement as if it had never been made, (2) acknowledge that the statement was made, but put it to rest by explaining as briefly as possible what had happened. I don't think we can say for sure that one or the other approach is right or wrong. 

faithfully
Jonathan


On Wed, 11 Jun 2003, Gentry Lange wrote:

> Jonathan,
> 
> 2nd hand reporting would be what this post has done, by putting quotes
> around the statement without first hand knowledge of the situation (as I
> believe this was culled from the other posts). The quotes give the piece the
> appearance of coming from someone, who this is other than me is unknown to
> me. My original post was made after receiving a call from one of the people
> who was in Jail at the time, I also followed up on the story by contacting
> both the SPD, the FBI, the NLG, as well as by going to the arraignment,
> talking to the person's father and numerous others involved in the story.
> Eartha from Michigan Indymedia also spent most of the day helping me
> research this story as well. To phrase what I did as "potentially explosive
> secondhand rumors as news" is just wrong. This is rather what both Indymedia
> Portland and now Indymedia Seattle have done at this point. My statement as
> to 2nd hand information is aimed at the use of my statement as quoted
> material.
> 
> I understand trying to quell the rumors, etc. And I understand that allowing
> anyone to dictate the story to us is also problematic. However without a
> source that's willing to provide further details, and others who are willing
> to corroborate her original story, and no official sources, I stand by what
> I said originally... this is rumormilling the story and bad journalism
> (admittedly this is what I did when I put the original story up, but it was
> first hand info, just unsubstantiated by additional sources). Further since
> I get editorial collective posts as a batch email, it wasn't until after the
> rewrite went up that I even knew that a story was going to go on our front
> page. However, to me it appears that the story was put together without even
> waiting to hear back from me, or by calling me directly.
> 
> Mysteriously removing the story was a bad decision on my part, however, I
> did email the editorial collective and both Walt and Brandon were in the
> space helping me at the time. So it was not done in secret. My original
> newswire post was rather inflammatory as well, and maybe next time a friend
> calls me from jail and says they are being investigated by the FBI for
> potential links to terrorist organizations, I will think more before I leap.
> However, it freaked me out and I did what I did. It has caused me to
> reevaluate how I handle these situations, and I apologize to everyone for
> the mistakes I made here.
> 
> To end on a good note, the only reason I threw out the "bad journalism"
> thing was that Indymedia Seattle is usually of the highest quality, and
> since you Jonathan are usually responsible for 90% of what goes on the wire,
> you have set your own bar pretty high.
> 
> Gentry
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: seattle-editorial-bounces at lists.indymedia.org
> [mailto:seattle-editorial-bounces at lists.indymedia.org]On Behalf Of
> seattle-editorial-request at lists.indymedia.org
> Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2003 12:06 PM
> To: seattle-editorial at lists.indymedia.org
> Subject: Seattle-editorial Digest, Vol 1, Issue 845
> 
> 
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> Today's Topics:
> 
>    1. RE: hey Gentry (Gentry Lange)
>    2. Re: RE: hey Gentry (jonathan lawson)
>    3. 	FSTV Coverage: TAKE BACK AMERICA Conference - 6/15 (julie)
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2003 15:35:57 -0700
> From: "Gentry Lange" <g at art13.com>
> Subject: [Seattle-editorial] RE: hey Gentry
> To: "Troy Prouty" <poeftr at hotmail.com>,
> 	<seattle-editorial at lists.indymedia.org>
> Cc: jl at u.washington.edu
> Message-ID: <IEEKKFAAODDNFHBDFNNCCEGPCCAA.g at art13.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="iso-8859-1"
> 
> 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
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Troy Prouty [mailto:poeftr at hotmail.com]
> Sent: Monday, June 09, 2003 3:23 PM
> To: g at art13.com
> Subject: hey Gentry
> 
> 
> did you make a mistake to post it in the first place?
> 
> I am sorry it keeps popping up..
> 
> _________________________________________________________________
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> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 2
> Date: Mon, 09 Jun 2003 15:53:42 -0700
> From: jonathan lawson <jonathan at indymedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [Seattle-editorial] RE: hey Gentry
> To: <seattle-editorial at lists.indymedia.org>
> Cc: jl at u.washington.edu
> Message-ID:
> 	<5.1.0.14.2.20030609153851.00b735a8 at jl.deskmail.washington.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
> 
> 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 terro