2009/9/21 Nathan <nawrich(a)gmail.com>om>:
Among issues difficult to resolve while
respecting the limitations of
the BLP policy, enter the article about a world-class athlete whose
gender has recently been questioned. The problem is this: can the
article discuss the supposed results of the tests and its
implications, as widely reported, without violating the BLP policy?
The information is clearly personal and very sensitive, and the
official results have not yet been released (and they may not be). In
normal circumstances, that would argue strongly against including
speculation. The perverse effect in this case, though, is that details
that have become common knowledge are entirely missing from our
article.
The case in question is a fairly easy one. The media speculation is
based on a report from a single newspaper and it's somewhat
questionable if that paper's source is as solid as they claim. We
wait.
It's easy to be dismissive by claiming that the question is an easy
one. The controversy itself is an issue, in addition to the underlying
ambiguity of the athlete's gender. Your claim that the story is based
on a report from a single newspaper should itself be subject to
verification. Similarly, questioning a newspaper's sources also needs to
be subject to verification. Substituting a perceived bias about an
individual with your bias about a newspaper is no solution.
Ec