“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.”
―Gustave Flaubert
Anyone who isn’t confused really doesn’t understand the situation.
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| — | Edward R. Murrow (via journolist) |
I’m sure you have been following the dust up over government officials demanding that news organizations permit them to clear their quotes .
Frankly, I’m not sure why there is a controversy. Our policy and common sense dictate that we don’t allow public officials to edit NJ coverage.
A quotation is just as important as any other paragraph in your story. If not, you wouldn’t include it.
So how is ceding control of an interview or quote any different than letting a press secretary edit any other paragraph? The entire story? All your stories? It’s not. Don’t do it.
If a public official wants to use NJ as a platform for his/her point of view, the price of admission is a quote that is on-record, unedited and unadulterated. Proposed exceptions can be discussed case-by-case with your editor.
We can’t hold leaders accountable while allowing them to pull our punches.
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| — | National Journal boss, editor in chief Ron Fournier, on quote-approval: It’s about control - The Washington Post |
Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. - John Steinbeck.
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| — | (via penamerican) |
At sea a fellow comes out. Salt water is like wine, in that respect.
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Herman Mellville Today is World Oceans Day (via penamerican) |
Like the music in elevators, the machine-made news comes and goes on a reassuringly familiar loop, the same footage, the same spokespeople, the same commentaries, what was said last week certain to be said this week, next week, and then again six weeks from now, the sequence returning as surely as the sun, demanding little else from the would-be citizen except devout observance. French Novelist Albert Camus in the 1950s already had remanded the predicament to an aphorism: “A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers.
… many scientists have pointed to a two-degree rise in global temperatures as the most we could possibly deal with.
If we spew 565 gigatons more carbon into the atmosphere, we’ll quite possibly go right past that reddest of red lines. But the oil companies, private and state-owned, have current reserves on the books equivalent to 2,795 gigatons — five times more than we can ever safely burn. It has to stay in the ground.
Put another way, in ecological terms it would be extremely prudent to write off $20 trillion worth of those reserves. In economic terms, of course, it would be a disaster, first and foremost for shareholders and executives of companies like ExxonMobil (and people in places like Venezuela).
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| — | Bill McKibben, “The Great Carbon Bubble, Why the Fossil Fuel Industry Fights So Hard” |
