Unmarked quotes, quoting badly and sinful silence
by henrycopelandFriday, April 11th, 2003
What the Agonist did — not putting quotation marks and attributions on stuff he posted — was bad and stupid.
But it doesn’t compare with the harm that can come from quoting (or even worse, misquoting) someone who speaks on the condition of anonymity… as the New York Times did this week.
Far worse than either of these, though, is the act of continuously failing to chronicle a regime’s blatant brutality in order to preserve access to “the story”… as did CNN and, apparently, every other news service with Baghdad bureaus during Saddam’s reign. Why abet a criminal conspiracy? What possible good came from staying to tell benign lies about the Iraqi regime?
April 22nd, 2003 at Apr 22, 03 | 1:55 pm
How about someone who comments anonymously, and then cites their own anonymous quote to justify themselves, as John Lott has possibly done?
If John is infact quoting himself anonymously as the source of information, should the “Journalist” who reported the anonymous source reveal this, or deny it?
April 22nd, 2003 at Apr 22, 03 | 3:59 pm
If you’ve come here from an InstaPundit post about the anonymous accusation that Steve Levitt is “rabidly antigun”, you might be surprised to learn that there has been extensive discussion about this matter on many different blogs. Oddly enough, Glenn Reynolds does not mention or link to any of this.
If you are interested in seeing what others have said, start here
April 23rd, 2003 at Apr 23, 03 | 7:14 pm
Glenn probably does not link to any of the “discussion” vis-a-vis Lott on “many different blogs” because he considers anti-gun zealot Tim Lambert’s efforts to discredit Lott a la Michael Bellesiles an exercise in jackassery.
April 25th, 2003 at Apr 25, 03 | 8:04 am
Tim Lambert on Glenn Reynolds’ question whether it is ok to discuss possible bias of panel members:
“(Err, discussing it is fine, Glenn, but you should either offer actual evidence in support of your claim or retract it.)”
Tim Lambert on the question of who was Reynolds’ anonymous source (after presenting no hard evidence):
“I think we are entitled to conclude that the character assassin is Lott. “