6 Comments to 'Pot, meet kettle'

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1. 
   Jim said,
   August 5th, 2008 at 10:42 am

   I read the blog post in question, and quite frankly it’s pretty obvious that your reaction to it is based on your personal animus towards the reporter rather than anything inflammatory in the post itself.

   He took issue with this blogger’s accusation that he was “obsessed” and “fixated” on Somali refugees - which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. The blogger had a GLARING conflict of interest which she conveniently neglected to mention in the process of attempting to tear him down on the subject. All he did was point it out. That’s completely fair game.

   This wasn’t some private conversation between friends: she publicly called him out on the internet for the whole world to see. He didn’t return any insult to her: all he did was point out that she has a vested interest in saying the things she said about him.

   As a reporter and blogger yourself, you should have had no problem with this exchange. Even in making this post, you were careful to include the disclaimers you did about your personal interest in the subject. Kudos to you. It allows your readers to judge for themselves what baggage you’re “bringing to party.” This blogger clearly failed to do that.

   People can now make up their own minds with the full information about what both parties think about the subject. She wasn’t just some disinterested third-party: she had an ax to grind, and there’s nothing wrong with letting people know that to be the case.

   If the blogger had been more upfront about where her own economic and social interests lie, then the reporter wouldn’t have had to bring it up. More than anything, it’s a lesson to the blogger that she should be more upfront about disclosing her self-interest in a story she’s blogging about.

2. 
   Aunt B. said,
   August 5th, 2008 at 11:22 am

   Jim, you are a fool, I’m sorry to say. Christy in no way failed to reveal her personal interest in the subject. On her very own blog, if you just scroll down a little farther, she says about her new job, “I’ll be helping out with the oversight of the state’s refugee resettlement program.”

   How much more upfront can she be? She says what she does for a living right there on her blog.

   So, I’m not buying that somehow Mosley was just trying to even up the playing field. He’s trying to pass himself off as objective (when anyone who reads him can see that he’s not. He doesn’t even talk about the Somalis who’ve lived in Shelbyville for, in some cases, for half a decade, as members of his community. I mean, how long do folks have to live in Shelbyville for him to at least concede that they are from Shelbyville.) and to pass her off as being biased but lying about it.

   Well, guess what. They’re both biased, but only one has been clear about where her biases lay, and it’s not the person whose side you’re taking.

3. 
   Jim said,
   August 5th, 2008 at 6:20 pm

   Aunt B -

   I’m not taking a side. Personally I think there are both merits and demerits to each of their positions vis a vis the Somali immigrants, but that wasn’t what this post was about.

   To use my case in point, if you read the entirety of Katie’s blog you could probably find all the information she specifically laid in her post on this particular topic. But a proper post criticizing someone else for a potential conflict of interest should include the author’s *own conflict of interest*. That’s what full disclosure is. Christy didn’t do that, and there’s no real argument that she did.

   Just because if someone searched long enough and hard enough through Christy’s blog you could find the information doesn’t mean that it was included in *that particular post* which is the only place that a first time reader of her blog would be likely to look. Pretending that every reader of that post would somehow mystically have that knowledge otherwise doesn’t make it so despite your assertions to the contrary.

   You can call me a fool if you like, but that still doesn’t change that what she did violates a basic tenet of blogger etiquette: fully disclose your conflict of interest or face a loss of credibility on the subject when someone else has to point it out for you.

   You may or may not maintain a blog yourself, but I do and have been reading blogs since long before they became popular. It’s obvious that you also have a personal bias against the reporter which is coloring your opinion on the matter, so you can hardly claim to be a disinterested party either.

   Personally I have no stake in the matter one way or the other. As I stated in response to one of Katie’s previous posts on the matter of the holiday switch: I couldn’t care less one way or another what a private employer agrees to in terms of holidays for its employees. When we start talking about my tax dollars, then it’s a different story. But we weren’t, so what do I care what they do? Answer: I don’t, but clearly you do.

   My response was entirely about the actual substance of the complaint: that somehow Christy was being treated unfairly by being called out because of her conflict of interest. If, as you say, she had nothing to hide then whether or not he pointed out where she worked should never have been an issue. But methinks you do protest too much….

4. 
   Aunt B. said,
   August 5th, 2008 at 10:19 pm

   You’ll have to point me to the place where the rules for blogging are set in stone, because I don’t recall ever seeing them before. The truth of the matter is clearly that very few people on their own blogs, make individual posts that are intended to stand completely alone. Maybe it’s asking too much of an ordinary person to read a few posts before accusing someone of hiding information. But Christy was clearly not intentionally hiding her biases and a journalist surely should have read a little bit into her blog to get a sense of where she’s coming from.

   I mean, please, could you imagine if every post on every blog had every bit of information a person needed in order to understand the writer’s biases, you’d never have returning readers.

   Which I’m sure you know, being a seasoned, long-term blogger, such as yourself.

   Ha.

5. 
   Jim said,
   August 5th, 2008 at 11:23 pm

   Aunt B -

   First, I never said she “intentionally hid her biases.” Once again, you’re reading something into what I wrote that wasn’t there. I’m perfectly willing to accept that she failed to disclose her biases out of a perfectly innocent ignorance. I don’t think she did it intentionally, but the fact is that she *did* do it.

   Second, as far as what “most people” do and don’t do, I would submit that insofar as “most people” blog about purely personal items and their only traffic is friends, family and a few acquaintances then what you have to say on that subject is entirely moot.

   When you’re writing a blog intended only for consumption by your friends and others who know you, then yes, there is a different and much lower standard. You would reasonably assume that your readers are familiar with not just your previous posts but many details about your life (such as where you work). In such a case, there would be no need to include disclaimers in your posts - indeed, in that case they would probably be unnecessarily redundant.

   However…

   When you take it upon yourself to get up on a soapbox and criticize someone else publicly in a post intended to be read by complete strangers, then there is absolutely a certain blogging etiquette which applies. A blogger can choose to adhere to those standards or not: it’s not like there’s a “blogging police” that is going to come and shut your site down if you don’t.

   But, when you choose not to meet those standards (or even find out what those standards might be) - for example, by not fully disclosing your biases - then you open yourself up to others doing a little research of their own and disclosing them for you.

   It’s purely a matter of CYA: if you don’t want to have your credibility questioned, then you disclose. If you don’t care, then you’re absolutely free to make your criticism without making any disclosures about what dog you have in the fight.

   In this case, that’s exactly what happened. She made the choice (for whatever reason, again, I make no suppositions as to her motive for doing so though obviously you do) to only point out what she believes his biases are without a word as to what hers were, and he responded simply by pointing out that she wasn’t just some disinterested third party. It’s nothing more than that.

   It’s clear you don’t like that he just didn’t lie down and take being criticized by someone who clearly had her own reasons for saying what she said. But to expect someone accused of being “obsessed” or “fixated” to roll over without pointing out that the person making those accusations has her own reasons for being “obsessed” and “fixated” herself is clearly ridiculous.

   You couldn’t stand letting my comment go without a response, and I didn’t even accuse of doing anything wrong. But, in the same breath (literally), you say that he didn’t have a right to respond to what she said? That clearly doesn’t pass the laugh test. You have one standard for yourself and those of whose opinion you approve, and another for the people you don’t like. It would be convenient for you if the world worked that way, but it doesn’t.

   It’s plain that you don’t like it, but all you’re doing is yet another iteration of the “pot calling the kettle black.” If you deserve a pass for wanting to defend your point of view, then so does he.

6. 
   neon said,
   June 17th, 2009 at 1:01 pm

   Your site is very easy in terms of expression and open. I think everyone who enters your site is very gratifying, but also sharing a very nice opportunity to give …

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