[WikiEN-l] Human dignity

[Stephen Bain]

On 7/18/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Stephen Bain wrote:
> >
> > This particular incident may only be embarrassing; what is undignified
> > is AP's reportage using a full name. What would likewise be
> > undignified would be the immortalisation of this in a biography,
> > forever linking this person's name with this event and this event
> > alone (there is no other biographical information available), as if
> > that was the sum total of their life.
>
> Exactly.  Perhaps I am surprisingly old-fashioned, but it seems to me
> that the news reporting in this case would have been _better_ had they
> simply used initials or some other literary device.
>
> For me, the amusement at the cute story (woman calls 911 to ask for a
> date) was seriously impaired by my distaste for the fact that this poor
> woman's name was being brought into the matter globally and on the
> Internet and against her will, in a way that makes it somewhat likely
> that future googling on her name for the next 30 years will bring this
> incident, and only this incident, to the forefront.

Indeed. In my newspaper of choice there's a section with a humorous or
unusual story on the front page every day, called Oddspot. People's
names are regularly omitted if the story is embarrassing such as this
one about the 911 call, replaced with "a man from Sometown" or
somesuch.

Today's Oddspot is two Irishmen who stole a boat in Wales trying to
get to Dublin. They sailed in circles for hours before returning to
Wales again. They're identified simply as "Two Irishmen"
(http://www.theage.com.au/oddspot/).

The reason of course is that it's not real news, it's light
entertainment. I don't think it's wrong to be making similar
distinctions as to what is real encyclopaedic content and what is
something else.

-- 
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com