Weis: Pete Carroll's dumped his wife, living w/ grad student in Malibu

cranberry · Dec 8, 2009

deskslave said:

The 'he said it, so we can report it' line of reasoning has been a point of contention for me at multiple stops in the past.

We don't have to give a source access to our pages to say things that are either untrue or of questionable veracity. Nor should we. Same goes for libelous/defamatory content. A key element in any libel case is the dissemination of the untrue information, and as the disseminators, we are likely to be included in any libel filing.

Put another way, we wouldn't allow a source, even a well-placed one, to say the sky was green. At the very least, we wouldn't do it without refuting that statement.

This, of course, is also a bone of contention in political reporting, where certain elements of the political world have decided that 'things that aren't true' are the same as 'opinions,' and that countering incorrect statements with facts is somehow stifling someone's opinion.
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This post brightens my day. Well put, sir.

WaylonJennings said:

I think one question becomes, what about when it is said in a press conference setting, like this. I could understand not using it in a one-on-one, not out of respect to Weis, but to Pete Carroll. But Weis said it in front of five people, which is somewhere between an informal session and a full-blown press conference. Can you sit on that?

I don't know the answer. I'm just raising the issue.
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Didn't only one person use the quote in question? To me, the only possible justification to run with this would be that somehow the urgency of the statement's news value to the public somehow outweighed taking the additional time to verify the statement and getting at some semblance of truth and balance.

Really, this was only about trying to be the first out with a salacious remark. Hey! I'm breaking news!

Tebow wept.

Crash · Dec 8, 2009

deskslave said:

The 'he said it, so we can report it' line of reasoning has been a point of contention for me at multiple stops in the past.

We don't have to give a source access to our pages to say things that are either untrue or of questionable veracity. Nor should we. Same goes for libelous/defamatory content. A key element in any libel case is the dissemination of the untrue information, and as the disseminators, we are likely to be included in any libel filing.

Put another way, we wouldn't allow a source, even a well-placed one, to say the sky was green. At the very least, we wouldn't do it without refuting that statement.

This, of course, is also a bone of contention in political reporting, where certain elements of the political world have decided that 'things that aren't true' are the same as 'opinions,' and that countering incorrect statements with facts is somehow stifling someone's opinion.
Click to expand...

This to infinity. It is the worst in politics, where everything becomes an opinion and thus balanced reporting is printing everyone's opinion, regardless of whether it has any basis in truth.

Bubbler · Dec 8, 2009

WaylonJennings said:

I think one question becomes, what about when it is said in a press conference setting, like this.
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It wasn't said during a presser, was it? My understanding (I haven't paid that much attention) is that Weis said it in a one-on-one, part of a series of one-on-one's he did with a few selected reporters.

YankeeFan · Dec 8, 2009

Bubbler said:

WaylonJennings said:

I think one question becomes, what about when it is said in a press conference setting, like this.
Click to expand...

It wasn't said during a presser, was it? My understanding (I haven't paid that much attention) is that Weis said it in a one-on-one, part of a series of one-on-one's he did with a few selected reporters.
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It was a five-on-one, not a news, conference, but also not a series of one-on-ones. All five -- hand picked by Weis -- were in the room at the same time.

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Weis: Pete Carroll's dumped his wife, living w/ grad student in Malibu

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Weis: Pete Carroll's dumped his wife, living w/ grad student in Malibu

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