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I Am Deleting the Blog

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Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#151

Post by giancarlostoro »

Uhrheber wrote: post #75

I stopped trusting reporters about 35 years ago, when I personally witnessed an occurrence, where a reporter was at the scene, and later read what he had written about it in the newspaper. It had practically nothing to do with what really happened, but was written in a way that most of their readers would most likely expect and endorse. I was still very young then, but it opened my eyes, and from then on, I mostly st…

Reminds me of when I was in elementary and one day I was sick and all my classmates met the governor. The media was obviously there and one classmate was asked to write something to say to the governor. The media claimed he was 11 but his age was 12. The teacher taught us that the media isnt always necessarily telling you the truth. There is way more bias in the media these past few years than I have ever seen so confirming sources is more important than anything. I dont usually trust "anonymous sources" unless there is accompanying hard evidence.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#152

Post by prvc »

sxp wrote: post #5

> He told me it would be a mostly positive piece about how we were an interesting gathering place for people in tech, and how we were ahead of the curve on some aspects of the coronavirus situation. It probably would have been a very nice article. Unfortunately, he told me he had discovered my real name and would reveal it in the article, ie doxx me. ... When I expressed these fears to the reporter, he just said that…

Is there any conceivable good reason for the NYT to publish the name in an article on the claimed topic, despite the author's wishes to the contrary? Can't think of any, unless the reporter was also misrepresenting the subject of the story or the angle he is taking.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#153

Post by jamesrcole »

stale2002 wrote: post #76
Findeton wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He could also name the NYT reporter.

There is no need to do that. As long as the reporter remains unnamed, for now, they can decide to either not publish the article, or not publish the name, and they will be able to go along with there life, without getting the negative backlash. If they do dox the person, though, their name will be on the article, and you'll be able to find it.

they've already succeeded in getting the site removed from the internet, and done so with complete impunity.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#154

Post by Rumperuu »

qq11ww22ee33 wrote: post #92
Smaug123 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is Scott's real name even relevant to the article? He has good reason not to want it published, and his real name is of no interest to most readers given that his entire public online presence is in the name "Scott Alexander". Knowing that Lewis Carroll was really called Charles Dodgson may be a piece of trivia that makes you win a pub quiz one day, and it may be of niche interest to someone who reads one of his…

If I was a writer I would not suddenly start using internet psuedonyms just because it sounds like a real person's name, much in the same manner putting down Groyper1488 in my article is ridiculous.

If your issue is that an online handle may sound strange or silly (e.g., ‘Count Dankula’), how would you handle someone whose legal name sounds strange or silly (e.g., ‘Moon Unit Zappa’ or ‘X AE A-XII’)?

If your issue is that an online handle is not someone's legal name, how would you handle someone who goes by a certain form of their legal name (e.g., using their middle name rather than their first name)? How would you handle someone whose name includes a title (e.g., ‘Cpl Bloggs’ or ‘Ambassador Taylor’)?

Everyone has a number of labels used to identify them, and the appropriateness of each is dependent on the situation being used. In the context of an article about the online community surrounding someone's online blog, which they publish under a certain name, it is entirely appropriate to use the relevant name. The only way that that person's legal name would be relevant to the article would be if it was reporting on their conduct outside of that community as well, which this article does not appear to have been doing.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#155

Post by zozbot234 »

jwilber wrote: post #128

I’ve seen a lot of criticism for the NYT as of late, and, sadly, it’s almost all been warranted upon inspection. I’m not sure if it’s a case of the top dog getting all the scrutiny, but it’s crazy to me how a company with so many good journalists can seem to have so many bad. Much criticism is not even new (Manufactured Consent, Judith Miller).

This is why the NYT is going to blink. If they doxx this guy, then this becomes a huge grassroots story about how they are "fake news media" that doesn't uphold journalism ethics standards. (Even more so if the article is a negative hit piece w/ politicized overtones, as some people are - rightly or wrongly - speculating here. People _will_ stand up for him over his views, however controversial in some places.) He made the right call here; shutting the blog down and stating his concerns so clearly was the way to get everyone involved to face the issue.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#157

Post by barry-cotter »

cameldrv wrote: post #124
Havoc wrote: post #85

Amateur hour over at NYT. What happened to the whole protect your source journalism ethos there?

The NYT's institutional values died when A.G. Sulzberger became publisher at the beginning of 2018.

The NYT published Walter Duranty’s denials of the Ukrainian Holocaust, and other warmed over Soviet propaganda. They were full on in their support for the Iraq war. Far less has changed about them than about your knowledge of them.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#159

Post by brnt »

buboard wrote: post #139
brnt wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disengaging based on an N=1 is not the type of individual action that improves our society. Our society is built on individual (and collective) attempts to improve, and you putting your money towards journalists you found to be doing a good job is the way we leave the world better than we found it. I hope you'll consider this, because our society cannot function without quality investigative reporting. I of course ag…

Most of the reported news is N=1 events. If the news reported averages instead, it wouldn't sell

That's a problem specific to news reporting, not journalism as a whole. I consider news reporting seperate from investigative journalism. What happened is far easier to report and consume than a report on why it happened. So, a better filter against biased news reporting, better than averaging, is taking a longer view and reading more comprehensive analyses. You can spin everything, but I find the more the article tends towards a study (investigative journalism), the blatant spinners drop off exponentially. Any bias is usually clear in such texts and therefore easily accounted for.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#160

Post by kbenson »

pvg wrote: post #104
tschwimmer wrote: post #77

A few relevant articles about how the New York Times claims to treat sources: [0]: "The Times sometimes agrees not to identify people who provide information for our articles...Sources often fear for their jobs or business relationships — sometimes even for their safety." [1] "If compassion or the unavoidable conditions of reporting require shielding an identity, the preferred solution is to omit the name and explain…

He wasn't really a source or a person in a hospital or elsewhere governed by privacy rules. As he says himself, his online persona is very lightly pseudonymous. It sucks that he's inconvenienced in this way but it's hard to see how these articles are relevant to his situation. If anyone actually wished him harm, they could probably find his name just as the reporter did before ever talking to him.

But he is a medical professional that explains that releasing his identity is possibly detrimental for those he treats. Is "hospital" the important part of that policy we should be focusing on, instead of the implications of why they might not want to report that person's name?
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