For what it’s worth, I think saying that “all of whom disagreed with my decision” is not an accurate summary of quotes like:
On the request for more time for right to reply, that’s a judgement call—is this a fair period for the allegations involved, or time wasting? It’s not unknown for journalists to put in a right to reply on serious allegations, and the subject ask for more time, and then try to get ahead of the story by breaking it themselves (by denying it).
Do you think it’s an accurate summary of quotes like the rest of her reply?
This feels like a good example of why you shouldn’t over-promise to your sources—you want a cordial relationship with them but you need boundaries too. I can definitely see a situation where you would agree to give a source a heads up once you’d decided to publish — if it was a story where they’d recounted a violent incident or sexual assault, or if they needed notice to stay somewhere else or watch out for hacking attempts. But I would be very wary of agreeing in advance when I would publish an investigation—it isn’t done until it’s done.
In the end the story is going out under your name, and you will face the legal and ethical consequences, so you can’t publish until you’re satisfied. If the sources are desperate to make the information public, they can make a statement on social media. Working with a journalist involves a trade-off: in exchange for total control, you get greater credibility, plausible deniability and institutional legal protection. If I wasn’t happy with a story against a ticking clock, I wouldn’t be pressured into publication. That’s a huge risk of libelling the subjects of the piece and trashing your professional reputation.
I don’t think there’s much use to selectively quoting a paragraph using the phrase “judgment call” when the reply as a whole emphasizes that she considers it a mistake to agree in advance to a particular publication date, that an investigation isn’t done until it’s done, and that you will face the legal and ethical consequences of publishing any falsehoods. In particular, to stick with the factual backing we both agree on: You maintained a hard publication date while receiving information two hours beforehand that substantially called into question a claim in the article that was later demonstrated to be false. Do you think “disagreed with your decision” is an inaccurate summary of those two paragraphs as they relate to that specific decision?
I think “your decision” implied that it was specifically about the choice to delay. I agree that all three had critiques of the process that was used, which indeed I found valuable and interesting to read!
It was. You decided, knowing hard evidence had just come in against one of the claims in the post, not to delay publication for even the length of time it would take to fix that claim, a claim that would later prove false.
I think I am failing to understand the argument here, but on the very specific decision to delay, the reply you cite said “that’s a judgement call”. Doesn’t seem worth litigating here though.
That’s right, though it seems to me that if someone thought it was reasonable to not give any right to reply in first place, then they presumably must also think that giving people only a very short time to reply is also OK, so one subsumes the other.
I am not totally confident of this, but on the face of it, if you think it was a reasonable judgement call to give someone no notice before posting, then it must also be a reasonable judgement call to give someone 4⁄1 days before posting.
I don’t think anyone here is arguing that in absolute terms Ben should have spent more time verifying claims non-adversarially? Like, Ben really did do a lot of that, and I think there might be many valid objections about how Ben went about it, but “more time” doesn’t seem like currently something people are arguing for.
My model is people specifically wanted Ben to spend more time in the adversarial stage of a potential fact-finding process, but the above quote suggests that in some circumstances “0 hours” is an acceptable amount of time to spend on that, which I find it hard to square with a perspective that “60 hours” is an unacceptable amount of time to spend on that, according to this specific source.
I really don’t know how the norms of professional investigative journalism work, but I imagine a lot hinges on whether the source of concern / subject of the piece is the repository of a large amount of relevant information about the central claims.
e.g. the point is “how much work do you need to put in to make sure your claims are accurate” and then sometimes that implies “no need to get replies from the subject of the piece because you can get the information elsewhere” and sometimes that implies “you have to engage a bunch with the subject of the piece because they have relevant information.”
I am however not super sure how this is related to the specific claim at hand here, which was just about whether the journalists that TracingWoodgrains asked are accurately summarized as “disagreeing with [the decision to not delay]”.
It seems to me is that at least one of the journalists thought it was a messy judgement call and didn’t give a recommendation one way or another on the contested question. So it seems inaccurate to me to summarize them the way TracingWoodgrains did.
(The other journalist says:
I think it depends a lot on the group’s ability to provide evidence the investigators’ claims are wrong. In a situation like that I would really press them on the specifics. They should be able to provide evidence fairly quickly. You don’t want a libel suit but you also don’t want to let them indefinitely delay the publication of an article that will be damaging to them. It is a tricky situation! I am not sure an investigative reporter would be able to help much more simply because what you’re providing is a pretty vague account, though I totally understand the reasons why that’s necessary.
which I also don’t think should be succinctly summarized in the same way)
(I feel sad about the downvotes here. I really feel like I am not making a particularly complicated point here, and am doing so in good faith. Would appreciate if voters could clarify, since I feel like my argument is pretty straightforward and is done in good faith)
I think it’s that you’re not factoring in the bigger point that Tracing and the journalist were making—that it is a clear error to promise a hard deadline to sources and so get into a situation where the you are having to make the judgement call about delaying
Sure, I think there is a reasonable argument to be had here that tries to answer a broader question, but I don’t think that should come at a loss of the ability to make locally valid arguments (but also, seems like votes corrected themselves).
Do you think it’s an accurate summary of quotes like the rest of her reply?
I don’t think there’s much use to selectively quoting a paragraph using the phrase “judgment call” when the reply as a whole emphasizes that she considers it a mistake to agree in advance to a particular publication date, that an investigation isn’t done until it’s done, and that you will face the legal and ethical consequences of publishing any falsehoods. In particular, to stick with the factual backing we both agree on: You maintained a hard publication date while receiving information two hours beforehand that substantially called into question a claim in the article that was later demonstrated to be false. Do you think “disagreed with your decision” is an inaccurate summary of those two paragraphs as they relate to that specific decision?
I think “your decision” implied that it was specifically about the choice to delay. I agree that all three had critiques of the process that was used, which indeed I found valuable and interesting to read!
It was. You decided, knowing hard evidence had just come in against one of the claims in the post, not to delay publication for even the length of time it would take to fix that claim, a claim that would later prove false.
My statement was accurate.
I think I am failing to understand the argument here, but on the very specific decision to delay, the reply you cite said “that’s a judgement call”. Doesn’t seem worth litigating here though.
The judgement call is on giving time for “right to reply”, not for “taking more time to verify claims”, right? Those seem kind of different to me.
That’s right, though it seems to me that if someone thought it was reasonable to not give any right to reply in first place, then they presumably must also think that giving people only a very short time to reply is also OK, so one subsumes the other.
I am not totally confident of this, but on the face of it, if you think it was a reasonable judgement call to give someone no notice before posting, then it must also be a reasonable judgement call to give someone 4⁄1 days before posting.
I don’t think anyone here is arguing that in absolute terms Ben should have spent more time verifying claims non-adversarially? Like, Ben really did do a lot of that, and I think there might be many valid objections about how Ben went about it, but “more time” doesn’t seem like currently something people are arguing for.
My model is people specifically wanted Ben to spend more time in the adversarial stage of a potential fact-finding process, but the above quote suggests that in some circumstances “0 hours” is an acceptable amount of time to spend on that, which I find it hard to square with a perspective that “60 hours” is an unacceptable amount of time to spend on that, according to this specific source.
I really don’t know how the norms of professional investigative journalism work, but I imagine a lot hinges on whether the source of concern / subject of the piece is the repository of a large amount of relevant information about the central claims.
e.g. the point is “how much work do you need to put in to make sure your claims are accurate” and then sometimes that implies “no need to get replies from the subject of the piece because you can get the information elsewhere” and sometimes that implies “you have to engage a bunch with the subject of the piece because they have relevant information.”
Yeah, I agree with these considerations.
I am however not super sure how this is related to the specific claim at hand here, which was just about whether the journalists that TracingWoodgrains asked are accurately summarized as “disagreeing with [the decision to not delay]”.
It seems to me is that at least one of the journalists thought it was a messy judgement call and didn’t give a recommendation one way or another on the contested question. So it seems inaccurate to me to summarize them the way TracingWoodgrains did.
(The other journalist says:
which I also don’t think should be succinctly summarized in the same way)
(I feel sad about the downvotes here. I really feel like I am not making a particularly complicated point here, and am doing so in good faith. Would appreciate if voters could clarify, since I feel like my argument is pretty straightforward and is done in good faith)
I think it’s that you’re not factoring in the bigger point that Tracing and the journalist were making—that it is a clear error to promise a hard deadline to sources and so get into a situation where the you are having to make the judgement call about delaying
Sure, I think there is a reasonable argument to be had here that tries to answer a broader question, but I don’t think that should come at a loss of the ability to make locally valid arguments (but also, seems like votes corrected themselves).