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Don't take my comment here as a rebuttal to the facts in your specific case, but I want to point out that the core concept of what journalists do is to filter and summarize. A journalist will never tell the whole story because that is not their job. In a good story, I see my published-output to total-reportage ratio to be about 5% or less, i.e. very little of what I've researched and reported makes it into a published piece. In a typical hour-long interview, only maybe a few minutes of what was actually said may be represented. But ostensibly, that's because the other 55 minutes helped inform me what the relevant 5 minutes are. That said, even in positive stories, sources will call me back and express surprise/disappointment that, for how long I talked to them, they were just a single paragraph in my bigger story. I see it similar to the surprise people have when they hear how a good programmer, ideally, puts out an average of a few lines of code a day. The work is not just about what you physically put out, but what you leave out. Tangentially, it's worth noting that some stories may change midway when more facts are known, and the interview subject doesn't realize that the direction of the story changes. Once I was asked to write a routine profile of a well-known business owner. I stopped by his office and had a very nice interview with him. Then as part of my regular routine, I did a quick check of court records to see if his or his company's name showed up. And it turned out there was a recent case filed by an employee making serious allegations of mistreatment and sexual discrimination. So I called the CEO again and asked him to comment on that, and he expressed displeasure that, rather than telling the story of how great his company was, I chose to focus on cheap linkbaity sleazy distortions. If you hear his side of the story, it's going to sound like I betrayed him to follow my own SJW-narrative to get clicks. That was not the case at all -- I was just a newbie and had no problem writing a happy story. If I had chosen to completely ignore the complicated, negative facts, then it's fair to argue that I was still pursuing a "narrative", one in which everything was going hunky-dory with the company, rather than life being complicated and messy. That said, there are what I consider to be sketchy practices when it comes filtering: when the reporter deliberately misleads you into why they're interviewing you, e.g. telling you they want to do a profile about your awesome volunteer work when really, the story is about you being accused of crimes. And also, choosing to quote you out of context, or using the "sexiest" quote just because it's sexy-sounding, not because it represents your story well at all. Again, not a commentary on your specific case. Just more of a reaction to others who think it's shady when journalists don't tell the "whole story". Journalists never tell the whole story. That's an impossible feat, even if it were desirable. |