Interesting Links for 26-04-2013

[andrewducker]

• Each can of sugary drink per day increases your chances of diabetes by 22%
  (tags: diet diabetes sugar )
• Kari Sperring - Why I started #Womentoread
  (tags: fiction writing women )
• Suicide: Probably not something you want to use to advertise your cars.
  (tags: epicwtf advertising suicide )
• BT (and TalkTalk) manage to exceed their usual appalling

Comments

[steer]

I think we'll have to agree to disagree here. For me her article was about what Wikipedia's policy was. Wikipedia's policy is the opposite. Anybody with any level of knowledge about computing could have checked that in ten minutes... it wouldn't need to be wikipedia specific knowledge. A journalist has a basic responsibility to fact check especially if they are going to write something damaging about an organisation. By fostering an impression that an organisation is sexist when it is not you discourage participation by women. If she'd have given a draft to just about anyone with basic IT and said "could you fact check this" it would have stopped right there. If she'd have talked to anyone in the organisation it would have stopped right there.

I guess we have very different ideas about what responsible journalism should consist of. For me a journalist has a core responsibility to be accurate. That's a core duty to spend at least some time checking what you are writing contains at least some core of truth. Charitably, maybe she's an author not a journalist... still, it's pretty disgraceful IMHO -- there's no evidence she made the slightest attempt to check her story other than discussing it with other novelists. If I want to read the misleading opinions of unknowledgeable people I have blogs for that not leading newspapers. :-)

[andrewducker]

It doesn't say anything about the official view of Wikipedia, it makes it clear that Wikipedia is edited by its users. It doesn't say there's a pervasive policy - it says that she noticed something odd. It's an op-ed, not a journalistic investigation.

And it is perfectly accurate, so far as I can tell.

[steer]

OK -- if you don't think the article is wrong then we're not going to find any agreement here.

Sorry this discussion got more heated than I intended. I thought you also believed the article was incorrect when I pointed out what I did -- hence my comments were made from the point of view that you and I commonly believed that the journalist had written an incorrect article. I was wrong to attribute that belief to you and this led me to assume a commonality of approach ("she is wrong, let us ask why is she wrong, could it have been prevented? Was she wrong maliciously or by accident?") where none existed. I always enjoy our exchanges even when we disagree.

[andrewducker]

I don't recall agreeing that it was wrong :->

Now, if it had been a journalistic takedown of how Wikipedia had sexist policies, and the journalistic hadn't contacted them and presented a balanced view of both sides, then I'd agree with you.

Re:

[steer]

No, purely my mistake in assuming that and I recall making a similar mistake in an earlier discussion with you some months back (assuming we shared a belief and arguing from that perspective).

Interesting your point of view of OpEd vs "journalistic". I had not included that perspective.

Re:

[andrewducker]

Heh. We clearly failed to learn from history! (Not helped by anger, and me replying in-between board games at my brothers place).

Oh, and yeah -I consider Op Eds and the Guardian's Comment Is Free section to be basically semi-curated blogs.