[Seattle-editorial] RE: Seattle-editorial Digest, Vol 1, Issue 847

[Gentry Lange]

Is the list down? I haven't received anything, even my own posts, in several
days.

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 5:33 PM
To: seattle-editorial at lists.indymedia.org
Subject: Seattle-editorial Digest, Vol 1, Issue 847


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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: RE: Seattle-editorial Digest, Vol 1, Issue 845
      (jl at u.washington.edu)
   2. RE: RE: Seattle-editorial Digest, Vol 1, Issue	845 (Gentry Lange)
   3. RE: RE: Seattle-editorial Digest, Vol 1, Issue	845 (Gentry Lange)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 17:18:35 -0700 (PDT)
From: jl at u.washington.edu
Subject: Re: [Seattle-editorial] RE: Seattle-editorial Digest, Vol 1,
	Issue 845
To: Gentry Lange <g at art13.com>
Cc: seattle-editorial at lists.indymedia.org
Message-ID:
	<Pine.LNX.4.43.0306111718350.30504 at hymn05.u.washington.edu>
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII

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it was unconfirmed and withdrawn (i.e. unlikely to be true).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
>
>
> Send Seattle-editorial mailing list submissions to
> 	seattle-editorial at lists.indymedia.org
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> 	http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/seattle-editorial
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
> 	seattle-editorial-request at lists.indymedia.org
>
> You can reach the person managing the list at
> 	seattle-editorial-owner at lists.indymedia.org
>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of Seattle-editorial digest..."
>
>
> 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..
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE*
> http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> 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


------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 17:36:51 -0700
From: "Gentry Lange" <g at art13.com>
Subject: RE: [Seattle-editorial] RE: Seattle-editorial Digest, Vol 1,
	Issue	845
To: <jl at u.washington.edu>
Cc: seattle-editorial at lists.indymedia.org
Message-ID: <IEEKKFAAODDNFHBDFNNCIEHLCCAA.g at art13.com>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="us-ascii"

Ok, now you have convinced me. And regardless, I tend to overstate my
objections, so maybe I should have originally said questionable. But now
that I understand your rationale, I have come over to your side of the
fence. I will actually just leave it as is... as I now agree with your
rationale. Additionally, I had no intention of totally abandoning the story
regardless of the people involved... it's a story, and the person who called
me knows that I am a writer for Indymedia, I also mentioned getting the
story on the wire to her during the conversation. However as I did not get
explicit permission I never used anyone's names, nor proposed a feature.
Yet, I am glad that some explanation is now online as a feature.

I guess I am a little to close to the story  to be objective.

Gentry

-----Original Message-----
From: jl at u.washington.edu [mailto:jl at u.washington.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2003 5:19 PM
To: Gentry Lange
Cc: seattle-editorial at lists.indymedia.org
Subject: Re: [Seattle-editorial] RE: Seattle-editorial Digest, Vol 1,
Issue 845


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
>
>
> Send Seattle-editorial mailing list submissions to
> 	seattle-editorial at lists.indymedia.org
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> 	http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/seattle-editorial
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
> 	seattle-editorial-request at lists.indymedia.org
>
> You can reach the person managing the list at
> 	seattle-editorial-owner at lists.indymedia.org
>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of Seattle-editorial digest..."
>
>
> 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..
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE*
> http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> 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



------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 17:36:52 -0700
From: "Gentry Lange" <g at art13.com>
Subject: RE: [Seattle-editorial] RE: Seattle-editorial Digest, Vol 1,
	Issue	845
To: <jl at u.washington.edu>
Cc: seattle-editorial at lists.indymedia.org
Message-ID: <IEEKKFAAODDNFHBDFNNCKEHLCCAA.g at art13.com>
Content-Type: text/plain;	charset="us-ascii"

I was, however, easily reachable.

Gentry

-----Original Message-----
From: jl at u.washington.edu [mailto:jl at u.washington.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2003 5:19 PM
To: Gentry Lange
Cc: seattle-editorial at lists.indymedia.org
Subject: Re: [Seattle-editorial] RE: Seattle-editorial Digest, Vol 1,
Issue 845


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
>
>
> Send Seattle-editorial mailing list submissions to
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> than "Re: Contents of Seattle-editorial digest..."
>
>
> 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..
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE*
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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



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