I would think that calling someone "a hero" is 'unncessarily diplomatic language,' and such a designation would require citation. In this case, the citation is his 'founding of a First Amendment defending organization.'
Its important to remember how trust foundations in general work in the U.S. They largely exist for the purposes of 1) financial self-sustenance 2) lobbying, and 3) public awareness. The last two have relatively low overhead, and the first has no real ties to the cause which it claims to represent. Hence we have various organzations that represent various causes which may or may not have some vague connection with the goals they claim to support.
Bjorn's language was indeed unnecessarily undiplomiac and needing of correction. But an examination of Siegenthaler's language in reference to Wikipedia as a whole likewise shows a lacking of the "kind and thoughful" traits claimed to be in private discourse. More to the point, Seigenthaler's transcripted comments arent evokative of someone who has a deep understanding of the U.S. First Amendment issues in question:
SEIGENTHALER: "...can I just say, where I'm worried about this leading. Next year we go into an election year. Every politician is going to find himself or herself subjected to the same sort of outrageous commentary that hit me, and hits others.
"I'm afraid we're going to get regulated media as a result of that. And I -- I tell you, I think if you can't fix it, both fix the history as well as the biography pages, I think it's going to be in real trouble, and we're going to have to be fighting to keep the government from regulating you."
People can decide for themselves if they think that some "libel" (i.e. 'uncorrected cruft') in one article will equate to a wider climate of presumably dire and draconian "government" regulation. I think the claim is beyond ridiculous, and throwing Kelly's little laundry list of media errors into the equasion, Siegenthaler's comments are almost indistinguishable from an attack on *free media from the point of view of *corporate media.
No doubt he is sincere, but his interests *seem to be in protecting the institutional, and not the emergent. In that context, being diplomatic to Siegenthaler for sake of converting him to understand the free media model is indeed a wise course of action.
Stevertigo
--- Jimmy Wales jwales@wikia.com wrote:
BJörn Lindqvist wrote:
I certainly had no idea who this Seigenthaler dude
was and
wouldn't have been able to spot the errors in the
article. Now I know
- he's a litigous asshole looking for revenge.
This is absolutely false and you should be ashamed of yourself for saying it.
John Seigenthaler, Sr. is a hero. He founded an organization devoted to the defense of the First Amendment. In all my interactions with him, he has been kind and thoughtful.
He is very much *not* litigious. (He never threatened to sue Wikipedia, and he specifically chose not to pursue legal action to force the ISP to cough up the name of the person who libelled him.)
--Jimbo
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