RE: Taking control of the documentary situation, an immodest proposal

[Jaime Headden <qi_leong@hotmail.com>]

Andreas Johnson said:

<Matt said "not X". They cut it down to "X". If that's not quote-mining, 
nothing is.>

  See, that's where it isn't so simple. The reporter, in Matt's own words, 
includes cautionary language, the "may"s and "maybe"s of:

  "This was sort of like a second brain to help control the back half of the 
body."
 
  This statement is entirely consistent and non-innaccurate with regards to 
what Matt wrote. The problem is that the temporalism was removed, and the 
quoted individual apparentrly expected not only the full caveat (including the 
temporalism) was to be retained, but that they would quote the whole 
explanation. In a short, short interview. It represents a sort of naievte with 
regards to what seems to be a lackadaisical understanding of science journalism 
today, and a weakness on the part of the quoted not to phrase his statement in 
such a way as to prevent such mangling. It certainly doesn't seem to have been 
done to intentionally misconstrue what he said, and therein lies the heart of 
the issue: Quote mining, as I mentioned before, is a hot-topic buzzword meant 
to invoke an attitude of misquote out of context in order to _intentionally_ 
create a false premise. This did not occur; the science journalism was sloppy, 
and the editor/producer did not have the knowledge required to correctly note 
how much of the caveat should have been retained (more than just "This was sort 
of like").

Cheers,

Jaime A. Headden

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