Thanks for this post. However, one of the first things that came to mind was the EA Forum itself.
It is completely public, much EA discourse happens here, and a lot of people use their real names/full names (I believe this is even encouraged). Clearly forum communication is not intended to be the same as an interview, and that it can’t be quoted as an interview (I expect/hope—I have no experience with journalism), and I think many people will already be bearing this in mind. It is also hard to prove of course who it is who is actually commenting, and whether people are using their own names, so it is less reliable there than an actual interview.
But the advice for talking to journalists seems to be for everyone in EA thinking about giving an interview, and generally I see it being very easy for a journalist to go on the forum and use that as a source (even including screenshots).
People being able to have discussions is one of the best things about the forum in my mind, and it’s good for people to be able to express their views without self-censoring. But also, anything written on the internet in public is clearly public.
I’m sure there are some nuances here. Does anyone have thoughts on this?
Incidentally, Jonas Vollmer’s comment on this forum post (can’t seem to link it sorry, at time of writing it is the comment above mine) gives example(s) where an EA Forum post has been directly quoted by Forbes.
Everything that’s posted on the EA Forum is public, and so journalists can (and often will) quote it. (Though obviously a lot of stuff is posted on the forum, and most of it won’t get attention from journalists!).
With the caveat that there are at least several hundred different legal jurisdictions in the world, I don’t see an obvious reason under U.S. law others can’t quote forum posts. The forum is public and accessible to the world, so there’s no plausible tort involving intrusion on private affairs. Forum posts and comments may well be copyrighted—but the doctrine of fair use pretty clearly allows reasonable quotation in news articles. I don’t see how quotation would be legally different from quoting a tweet. Pasting someone’s treatise of several thousand words might well be a different story.
To me, the biggest risk as a journalist to quoting is that you have no independent verification of who wrote the post/comment. If the journalist attributed a controversial quote to an identifiable real person, and it turns out the post was written by someone masquerading as the real person, there could be some liability there if the real person suffered reputational damage.
This is a really important point. It might make sense to talk to journalists in order to contextualize what you said on the EA Forum—or to ask them not to use something!
Answering in writing should help with the “foot in mouth” problem. You can ask them to send questions, and say you don’t promise to answer all of them.
A journalist reached out to me recently and this is basically what I did; no regrets so far at least.
IMO “try to respond in writing” should be standard advice when dealing with journalists. Past that, I remember a Less Wrong user once created a (public) thread specifically for taking journalist questions; that seems like a good way to discourage misrepresentation.
Thanks for this post. However, one of the first things that came to mind was the EA Forum itself.
It is completely public, much EA discourse happens here, and a lot of people use their real names/full names (I believe this is even encouraged). Clearly forum communication is not intended to be the same as an interview, and that it can’t be quoted as an interview (I expect/hope—I have no experience with journalism), and I think many people will already be bearing this in mind. It is also hard to prove of course who it is who is actually commenting, and whether people are using their own names, so it is less reliable there than an actual interview.
But the advice for talking to journalists seems to be for everyone in EA thinking about giving an interview, and generally I see it being very easy for a journalist to go on the forum and use that as a source (even including screenshots).
People being able to have discussions is one of the best things about the forum in my mind, and it’s good for people to be able to express their views without self-censoring. But also, anything written on the internet in public is clearly public.
I’m sure there are some nuances here. Does anyone have thoughts on this?
Incidentally, Jonas Vollmer’s comment on this forum post (can’t seem to link it sorry, at time of writing it is the comment above mine) gives example(s) where an EA Forum post has been directly quoted by Forbes.
e.g. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnhyatt/2022/11/17/disgraced-crypto-trader-sam-bankman-fried-was-a-big-backer-of-effective-altruism-now-that-movement-has-a-big-black-eye/?sh=5e5a531b4ce7
Anyone know what can and can’t be quoted? Is everything quotable? Is there any permission required?
Everything that’s posted on the EA Forum is public, and so journalists can (and often will) quote it. (Though obviously a lot of stuff is posted on the forum, and most of it won’t get attention from journalists!).
With the caveat that there are at least several hundred different legal jurisdictions in the world, I don’t see an obvious reason under U.S. law others can’t quote forum posts. The forum is public and accessible to the world, so there’s no plausible tort involving intrusion on private affairs. Forum posts and comments may well be copyrighted—but the doctrine of fair use pretty clearly allows reasonable quotation in news articles. I don’t see how quotation would be legally different from quoting a tweet. Pasting someone’s treatise of several thousand words might well be a different story.
To me, the biggest risk as a journalist to quoting is that you have no independent verification of who wrote the post/comment. If the journalist attributed a controversial quote to an identifiable real person, and it turns out the post was written by someone masquerading as the real person, there could be some liability there if the real person suffered reputational damage.
This is a really important point. It might make sense to talk to journalists in order to contextualize what you said on the EA Forum—or to ask them not to use something!
Answering in writing should help with the “foot in mouth” problem. You can ask them to send questions, and say you don’t promise to answer all of them.
A journalist reached out to me recently and this is basically what I did; no regrets so far at least.
IMO “try to respond in writing” should be standard advice when dealing with journalists. Past that, I remember a Less Wrong user once created a (public) thread specifically for taking journalist questions; that seems like a good way to discourage misrepresentation.
I really like the idea of asking for a public written thread for Q & A from a journalist to avoid misrepresentation.