On 6/3/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Herewith is a short parable demonstrating the innate moral ambiguities
of the media...
Let us imagine you wake up to find innumerable people mocking you
publicly around the world. A newspaper comes to you and says "would
you like to put your side of the story forward"?
You can either a) hide and hope they decide to stop; or b) make the
most of a bad thing, and try to divert the shittiness. Which would you
do?
Taking the interview is b); it requires some guts and is a bit of a
gamble, but if you can stay cool and handle yourself well in the glare
then the entire thing will burn out pretty fast and you can go back to
normality again. If you choose a), well, maybe it'll burn out. Maybe
it won't. Maybe you'll just keep being hounded until you take b), and
by then maybe you'll be in a worse position to fend off the wolves...
(Compare, eg, the occasional publicity blip of someone accused of
having an affair with a major politician - they shoot to fame on the
terms of a muckraker journalist, they take the interviews and explain
patiently it's all nonsense, everyone loses interest and they return
to private life)
And then some buffoon accuses you of courting publicity. We're had a
similar display of imbecility from people defending the production of
a purported "biography" of QZ.