On 3/21/07, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
There's a big difference here. Court proceedings are published, unlike birth certificates, and are certainly not confidential, like medical records. These are both published documents. How can the use of
published
documents, to verify that they said what they are reported to have said,
be
said to be "original research" or, for that matter, "investigative journalism"?
Stating a simple fact from a simple primary source is not a problem. Putting together an entire history of a case from multiple primary sources is OR. A history is more than just the sum of the events - which events you choose to include and which you don't, how much emphasis you put on each one, etc, all change the way the reader will interpret the facts, that's what makes it OR and an NPOV violation.
Yes, and there were three parts to the section. One said "the case happened", and was supported by a primary source document. Not, in my opinion, OR. The second part supplied some details, and was sourced to the party that filed (and won) the case. AFAIK, the losing party has not commented on the details of the case, but I may be wrong. There's the possibility of POV/RS issues here, but not OR. The third part was the outcome of the case, supported by the court ruling - based on a primary source, but not, in my opinion, OR.