[WikiEN-l] The outside world on biographies of slightly notablepeople

[Tony Sidaway]

On 6/3/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at 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.