“I think there’s somebody out there that called us and said, ‘Hey check this out,’” the officer said. “Did I see you guys praying? No. Do I know what you were saying? I don’t know if you guys repeat the same thing, or if you’re actually over there saying, ‘I hope that I kill a police officer today.’ I don’t know that you’re not saying that.”The author pulled this quote from a cellphone video recording of an encounter between police officers and some people of the Islam faith that were performing their sundown prayers in a Henderson, Nev. parking lot.
“Why would our President, supposedly a Christ-fearing man, deliberately mislead the American people?” asked one anti-Arab website. “He knows history and has all the intelligence resources of our government at his disposal; why would he deliberately lie?”This quote the author retrieved from an anti-Arab website.
I found these quotes of particular interest because they came from interesting non-traditional places. The first came from a recording of an police officer performing his duties, a subject that is in much debate in legal circles. The second quote came from a website, you have to wonder the accuracy of such a quote.
I think is a good example upon which to base a question or discussion to Angelia and Jeremy. Suppose we are all editors at a news organization that has print, podcast, and web outlets. How do you handle differing opinions over what is publishable -- extending perhaps in to different standards for different platforms. How would you feel if you were a print reporter sitting on a quote of dubious origin, only to have the quote used in a podcast or in another reporter's blog.
ReplyDeleteAnd here is a deliberately provocative question most of us will instinctively reject, but which seems to be manifest (i.e., what goes in a reporter's blog might not meet editorial standards for publication in print) Are there different editorial standards for varying media outlets?
Old school thinking says that if we cant verify, it does not exist. An unattributable or unverifiable allegation, for example, remains unpublished. Has this fundamentally changed? Is the practice now to "put it out there" because some blogger will put it out -- and then retreat into a discussion about whether or not we should have published?