[jsmthrowaway]

I'm extremely suspicious of your first anecdote^, given how vital the care and feeding of sources is for someone who makes it to the WSJ, and given that you're probably not being interviewed by Woodward and Bernstein about a story of grave national importance. I suspect miscommunication is at play here, probably in both cases, and I'm confident in that assessment given the drive-by characterization that follows. Can you back up either anecdote with emails from the journalists in question? Your claims, at face value, would lead to the end of more than one career if publicly demonstrated (since you specifically named two mastheads that would care about such behavior, unlike others).

Burden of proof is on you here.

Journalists do lean on sources, but the stakes have to be pretty damned high. I'm willing to be wrong here, but there's an underlying narrative to this comment that I think is really driving it.

^ Honestly, it sounds like your clever spin on a common uncooperative source tactic: "if you don't answer my questions I won't have the context to accurately report the story and will have to write what I have," which is just a reporter being honest and giving you an opportunity. I can see that tactic being interpreted as a threat, to be fair, but it isn't.

[nitrogen]

In my experience from myself and people I know being misquoted or misrepresented, it's when the stakes are low (except maybe someone's profit motive) that things are at their worst. I haven't had any problems myself with my now-sidelined startup, but when I was a teenager I was misquoted about something as trivial as a local video store. Others I know have been misrepresented to an extreme degree on political topics by local papers.

[jsmthrowaway]

Different issue, but related. Low impact stories are often rushed and not rigorously written. Sloppy versus actual malice, and I use that very specific legal term intentionally; reading about that and Sullivan will better illustrate the distinction I'm making between the two than I ever could.

Playing hardball with sources as that commenter describes is high stakes stuff. Sloppy stories are sloppy stories because they don't get detailed attention. Related, but different.

[firebones]

I agree with your bigger point, but it seems like what's at play here is the asymmetry. Low-impact to WSJ/NYT could potentially be very high-impact (positively or negatively) to the subject of the quote.

I can imagine a lot of scenarios where people feel burned.

Let's say a journalist is doing a piece on topical topic X. They get a bunch of mundane talking points from the usual sources in favor of X. Then they interview a more nuanced founder who is generally in favor of X, but offers a choice quote offering caution. When the story is constructed, the narrative sets up how X is this big trend, but the outspoken-yet-balanced founder--who happens to have a quote or two on the anti-X side of the spectrum--suddenly is found to be the opposition (despite being in the business of promoting X).

It's easy to see how the journalist feels like they got a good quote (founder of X-related company breaks news by not parroting blub-founders!), while the founder feels betrayed (95% of my discussion was blub in favor of X, and you chose my nuanced 5% to paint me as outside the mainstream!)

So from the WSJ/NYT point of view--jeez, here's another obligatory story on tech X, but at least one person gave us an edgy quote. And from the nuanced founder point of view--damn, those slimy journos took me out of context and painted me outside the X herd.