I’m curious what the goal of communicating with this journalist was. News organizations get paid by the pageview, so they have an incentive to sell a story, not spread the truth. And journalists also are famous for misrepresenting the people and topics they cover. (Typically when I read something in the press that discusses a topic I know about, they almost always get it a little wrong and often get it a lot wrong. I’m not the only one; this has gotten discussed on Hacker News. In fact, I think it might be interesting to start a “meta-journalism” organization that would find big stories in the media, talk to the people who were interviewed, and get direct quotes from them on if/how they were misrepresented.) If media exposure is a goal, you don’t work with random journalists who come to you telling you that they want to include you in stories. You hire a publicist or PR firm that does the reverse and takes your story to journalists and makes sure they present it accurately.
News organizations get paid by the pageview, so they have an incentive to sell a story, not spread the truth.
Harper’s magazine is not a website that counts pageviews as it’s prime metric.
It makes money via subscriptions. Different business model.
In fact, I think it might be interesting to start a “meta-journalism” organization that would find big stories in the media, talk to the people who were interviewed, and get direct quotes from them on if/how they were misrepresented.
That could be useful for giving people a better idea of how the media works.
You hire a publicist or PR firm that does the reverse and takes your story to journalists and makes sure they present it accurately.
That’s a naive view. There no way a PR firm can force accurate representation.
So would you suggest we only read PR-firm-generated articles to get the “real story”?
More direct answer: Not talking to journalists allows them to represent you however they want, along with the “refused to comment”. Talking at least gets your own words in.
I also don’t see anything clearly unethical in this article’s journalism.
I’m curious what the goal of communicating with this journalist was. News organizations get paid by the pageview, so they have an incentive to sell a story, not spread the truth. And journalists also are famous for misrepresenting the people and topics they cover. (Typically when I read something in the press that discusses a topic I know about, they almost always get it a little wrong and often get it a lot wrong. I’m not the only one; this has gotten discussed on Hacker News. In fact, I think it might be interesting to start a “meta-journalism” organization that would find big stories in the media, talk to the people who were interviewed, and get direct quotes from them on if/how they were misrepresented.) If media exposure is a goal, you don’t work with random journalists who come to you telling you that they want to include you in stories. You hire a publicist or PR firm that does the reverse and takes your story to journalists and makes sure they present it accurately.
Harper’s magazine is not a website that counts pageviews as it’s prime metric. It makes money via subscriptions. Different business model.
That could be useful for giving people a better idea of how the media works.
That’s a naive view. There no way a PR firm can force accurate representation.
So would you suggest we only read PR-firm-generated articles to get the “real story”?
More direct answer: Not talking to journalists allows them to represent you however they want, along with the “refused to comment”. Talking at least gets your own words in.
I also don’t see anything clearly unethical in this article’s journalism.
In a case like LW there’s also enough material online that a journalist can simply quote you if he wants to do so.
The worst mainstream media article in which I’m quoted didn’t have the journalist who wrote the article speaking to me.