wagner@uunet.uu.net (Mitch Wagner) (05/27/90)
In article <8166@accuvax.nwu.edu> jet@karazm.math.uh.edu (j. eric townsend) writes: #In article <8120@accuvax.nwu.edu> somebody wrote: #>In article <8066@accuvax.nwu.edu> jet@karazm.math.uh.edu (j. eric #>townsend) writes: #>>If you are asked to give an interview on say, PBX security, offer #>>to review the reporter's story before they submit it. #>In connection with the times I sat for interviews regarding the #>Internet Worm, I always offered just such a service. Almost #>uniformly, the response was a semi-hostile glare followed by "our #>editors have a policy of not allowing our stories to be censored." #1. Explain to them that you don't want to censor the story, but make #sure the facts are correct. #2. Call the reporter's editor, and explain the situation to them. #Something like: "It's not the tone or point of view I'm worried about; #it's the facts regarding the technology. I want to insure that you #represent the technology correctly in your story." #Any editor who calls this "story censorship" should probably be fired... Just $.02 here from someone who spent almost four years working for daily newspapers, as a reporter: The reason for the traditional prohibition against allowing sources to read stories in advance is twofold. One is to avoid giving an unfair advantage to the proponents of one point of view over the proponents of another point of view. (I'm anticipating here that someone is going to reply, "But, the time I asked to read an article, I wasn't espousing any particular point of view. I was just trying to get the facts out!" (But I'm sure there was someone who would disagree with every word you said in the article, who would have said the same exact thing to the reporter.) The second reason is practicality. It takes an awful long time for a layman to review an article, and more than half the time, said layman will come back with the most incredibly nitpicky changes, which require time-consuming fights/diplomatic meetings to convince said layman that the changes just weren't worth it. This is not to excuse newspapers for errors of fact; just to explain some of the reasons why review-by-sources isn't allowed. Just a point of view. Mitch wagner@utoday.UUCP