There was a heated debate among bloggers when Mike Arrington declined a telephone interview with a Wired journalist and insisted on having an email exchange to avoid being misquoted in the print media.
Jeremy Wagstaff, an acclaimed journalist and writer with WSJ, offers an interesting perspective to this whole phone vs email debate:
Everyone thinks they’ve been misquoted, even if you show them the instant messaging text chat record. When people say they’ve been misquoted more often than not they mean the main idea they wanted to convey wasn’t what the journalist focused on or chose from the interview. That’s tough, but it’s not wrong. And it’s not misquoting.
..[snip]..
What interviewees fear, above all, is the unpredictability of the interview. They want to rid themselves of the uncertainty and danger of talking to someone who will consider anything they say fair game.
loose wire blog: The Future of the Interview
[tags]inspiration, interviews[/tags]
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/internet/favorites/why-interviewees-insist-on-email-interviews-with-journalists/263/
Tags: inspiration, interview, interviews, Internet, Tumblelog
