Talking to the Press Considered Harmful

[David Honig]

At 02:29 PM 10/9/01 -0400, Declan McCullagh wrote:
>On Tue, Oct 09, 2001 at 10:09:25AM -0700, Tim May wrote:
>> I've had a couple of reporters try to reach me for "quotes." When I 
>> turned them down, they replied along the lines of "But it'll only take a 
>> minute of your time." All the worse, but they miss this point.
>
>There is a tiny bit of room for negotiations. You could agree to do the
>interview on condition that they read you back the quotes (or email you
>back the quotes) that they're going to use in the article.

This agreement isn't enforcable, is it?  Even if it were, by the time
you've sued them for
damage to your rep for misquoting, its too late.  

Cf Mischaracterization of Zimmermann and Anderson.  

Yes future search engines will look for retractions, as will diligent
historians, but those investing less effort will be misled.  Through
no fault of the person with the misquoted opinion.

It would be better for Tim (etc) to do a writeup, post it, and point
to it.  Then others could find the original and compare reporters'
more-widely-read interpretations.  If Q & A are useful, add the decent ones
to your site,
possibly after giving the reporter time to publish (if they help
generate content they have earned this; but your opinions shouldn't
be monopolized by the reporter if possible.)

We do this source checking normally, when a reporter is useful enough to
include a source URL
and makes far-out claims, even if we trust the reporter.