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Re: Cambridge Conference Debate - March 17, 1998
I've threaded my commments to...
>(2) WE DID NOT GO TO THE MEDIA WITH THIS STORY, THE MEDIA CAME TO US
> Garreth Williams, Associate Director, IAU Minor Planet Centre
Come on now, don't you think that even the title is kind of naive?
The author even indicates that he knew that the information was being made
available to journalists--and specifically packaged in a form that would be
understandable to journalists:
>The PIS was
>put on the website so that any journalist who read the IAUC could find
>answers to the standard questions that journalists ask in a form that
>nonscientifically-trained journalists can understand. We did not
>send the PIS to any media outlets. You may think this is a question of
>semantics, but it is not. We specifically note at the foot of each PIS
>that the document should not be redistributed. If third-parties chose
>to ignore this and redistributed the PIS, that cannot be our
>responsibility.
What in Gods name does the author think journalists do??
And as it regards "observations"...
>I hasten to add that in *every* interview we gave (particularly those
>given prior to the identification of the 1990 prediscovery observations
>by Ken Lawrence of Eleanor Helin's group) we were very careful to
>stress both the uncertainty and the need for further observations
>before we could say anything definitive about the 2028 encounter.
>Guess which bits of the interviews ended up on the cutting-room floor?
>TV news, in particular, is looking for sensationalism.
**TV NEWS LOOKING FOR SENSATIONALISM, WHO COULD HAVE IMAGINED?!**
>We did not go to the media with this story. The media came to us.
Yeah. While the author wishes to absolve himself and his colleagues of any
responsibility in this matter, I just hope that quietly they will admit
that it's time to modify their protocol.
darryl
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