chiggerbit wrote:You know, c2w, I got to thinking about what you said about Virginia M (sorry, not even going to try the last name, but I know how my mom would pronounce it, in the back of her throat). Anyway, what it got me to thinking is that it's too bad there isn't more personal information provided on Nick Bryant, to kind of assess whether there might be any borderline conflicts of interest, that kind of thing.. Jeff locked that thread so I can't post there.
Nick Bryant does readers the customary favor of stating his credentials, qualifications and experience in the usual place and traditional format, so that they have someplace to start looking if they want to know more about how reliable his word is. I don't think writers are required to disclose any more
personal information than they fell like sharing. Unless they have a personal conflict of interest or something.
For example, rule #1: Don't have intimate relationships with your subjects or sources unless you want to have to have parentheticals in ever story reading "(Full disclosure: Between October and December of 2003, Jack D. Subject and this writer lived together in a cozy cottage by the seaside in a state of romantic bliss that lasted three days before turning to increasingly bitter reprisals about one another's sexual inadequacies and failure to put the bar of soap back in the soap dish after using it. However, all of the material quoted in this story comes from two lengthy interviews conducted in late August and mid-September of that year, and we have neither spoken nor acknowledged each other's existence at any point during the writing process. So my belief that he's a total asshole is in no way influenced by our brief and hellish involvement from which I still haven't recovered up unto this very moment, which happens to be exactly eleven months, three weeks and four days since I first had the misfortune to lay eyes on that abusive cretin, but who's counting?)"
Actually, rule #1 is: Neither accept money and other financial/professional favors and benefits from your sources and subjects, nor offer them to your sources and subjects. Buying them dinner is probably okay as long as you expense it, though.
Also, seriously. There are common-sense guidelines wrt what kind of thing readers and reporters ought to be wary about just taking on faith. I mean, doing a real background check on someone is a very, very time-and-labor intensive undertaking. So it's not like I'm suggesting that when someone says he was born in Newark, New Jersey, you have to go hunt down all the people who lived on the same block as his or parents at the time of his or her birth in order to make sure he's not lying to you about some intrigue that happened at Cape Canaveral 42 years later, or whatever.
It's very anomalous that VM has a blank space where the "about the author" info should be. There are an infinite number of possible explanations for that anomaly, many of which might be totally benign. Until the unprofessional and manipulative email, I really didn't have any much of a brief either for or against her. It was more like in my estimation, there were enough question marks around her to....Well, as I said: To merit caution. I don't have any unconquerable doubts about her now, for that matter. That email did not reflect well on her. At all. But that doesn't mean she should be branded by it for life. If her future work is good, it's good. I'm pretty much status quo wrt her, really. There are enough question marks around her work to merit caution. None of her custom-addressed to RI comments so far have been anything other than inappropriate at best, imo. That last one was and one other had some stuff in them for which there's really not much excuse, in professional terms. But maybe she's just kind of unpleasantly eccentric, or maybe she knows something I don't, or maybe she's entitled to her standards and I to mine. And actually, that last one's not a "maybe." She is. And I am. By my standards, she's less vigilant about remembering not to appear ethically compromised than she ought to be. But those are my standards, and neither she nor anyone else has to answer to or respect them. I say: Caution is merited. Others may disregard that or regard it, as they wish.