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Didn’t check facts
I was astonished at your front page article last Friday (“Survivors”). My purpose here is not interact with Natalie Greenfield’s account as reported by that article, but rather to marvel at the slipshod reporting procedures employed by the Daily News.
There were numerous factual claims made in that article, and those factual claims were attached to names. I wonder — how many of the claims were erroneous? Because you didn’t bother to check, you have no idea. Your masthead says that you are “committed to ethical and accurate coverage of the news.” How committed? Was a phone call going to be too much of a strain? Given the nature of an article like that, why would you run it without the reporter doing some rudimentary fact-checking?
If you named our church, as you did, and if you reported certain claims about us as fact, as you did, you had an ethical and professional obligation to check to see if there were another side to the story. This is what you failed to do.
I see that your circulation is now down to 5,100. Keep up the diligent work and I think you can get it into the 4,000s by July.
Douglas Wilson
Moscow
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More standard Wilson: “I refuse to interact with the facts as presented, but I can assure you that you don’t have all the facts. ”
Although — if they didn’t contact Christ Church, it is sloppy reporting.
“Although — if they didn’t contact Christ Church, it is sloppy reporting.”
I would agree with you if the point of the DN’s story was to report the facts of her case. But I disagree because the point of the DN’s story was to report Natalie telling her story. The Kirk was primary to Natalie’s story, which the DN covered as part of their “Sexual Assault Awareness Month” theme, but the Kirk was irrelevant to the DN’s story. Replace the words “Christ Church” with the words “smelly sewer.” It does not change Natalie’s story or her telling it.
On the other hand, the DN should not have printed Wilson’s smear of Gary Greenfield without contacting Gary first. Frankly, they should not have given Wilson any space yesterday, because he’s irrelevant, but since they did, they should have kept him on point.
Another example of it’s all about Doug Wilson (in his mind) and nothing about a young woman whose life and family was dramatically changed due to child sexual abuse.
When a journalist writes anything regarding “Pastor” Wilson, rest assured that unless The Would Be King of Moscow-Pullman is reflected as magnificent, incredibly wonderful, so wonderful that there are no words to properly describe his wonderfulness, the result, in Wilson World, will be “slipshod reporting”.
I read this as, “you didn’t let me control the story, so you are wrong.”
Exactamundo.
Plus he’s such an insolent little snot about it.