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

[Andreas Johansson <andreasj@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 6:36 PM, Jaime Headden <qi_leong@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Andreas Johnson said:
>
> <Matt said "not X". They cut it down to "X". If that's not quote-mining, 
> nothing is.>
>
> Â 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:
>
> Â "This was sort of like a second brain to help control the back half of the 
> body."
>
> Â This statement is entirely consistent and non-innaccurate with regards to 
> what Matt wrote.

No it isn't. The preceding words were "And for a while it was thought
that may be", the removal of which changes it from a statement about
what was thought into one about what is.

> 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.

Whether Matt Wedel expressed himself poorly doesn't affect whether the
quote was accurate or not.

> 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").

Quote mining is taking a quote out of context so that it seems to say
something different from what it does in context - intent is generally
impossible to demonstrate. (As is lack of intent.)


Also, that an editor/producer knows that removing "it was thought
that" changes the meaning of what follows is hardly an unreasonable
expectation.

-- 
Andreas Johansson

Why can't you be a non-conformist just like everybody else?