Thursday, March 16, 2006

HufPo Messes with Ethics and Commits Hatchet Job on Clooney Quotes

George Clooney calls attention to HufPo's blatant slice and dice of his words, thus proving now more than ever what most of us have already figured out about Huffington--that she knows just as much about basic ethics as she does about blogging....

This is what happens when you get people with humungous egos and no sense of the blogosphere, trying to blog--you have them giving inappropriate advice to friends and then screwing with their words when they won't follow your dictate. Making up The Rules as she goes along:
Though she sought Clooney's approval, "I didn't need permission because his statements are in the public domain." Nor did she think she needed to credit the source of the statements.


Very similar to this other group of dopes.

Amazing how she didn't think there'd be a problem quoting someone out of context (another point missed from journalism 101) When you're blogging, you're in a different game than journalism, and, more than ever, you need to be careful, ask permission, not slice-and-dice someone's words to fit a preconceived agenda, etc.

Out here in the blogosphere, it's not about your ego. If you aren't a bona fide jouno, which is how bloggers (celebrity or not) are viewed, you've got to be very, very careful. Scrupulously careful. Your own opinion is one thing--monkeying with the words of another person to shore up what you think they should say is something totally different.

When Huffington tried to blow it off as a "misunderstanding," Clooney's publicist Stan Rosenfield called it like it is:
"It's not a misunderstanding, it's misrepresentation," he said. "She knows what she was doing. She was saying to people that she had George Clooney's blog and was printing it. George Clooney does not make statements. He answers questions."
(from here)

And that, my dears, is the crux of the matter.

So, I now love George Clooney more than I did before--good looks and some good sense!



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2 comments:

Patricia said...

One of the things that blogs do a lot is quote people. You want to say that George Clooney said this or that, the blockquote tags can be applied with the click of a mouse, you provide the context and you're good to go. There is no real need to misrepresent, unless for some reason you want to pretend that someone is blogging on your site when he or she isn't.

Tish Grier said...

exactly! It couild have been a "blog" of blockquotes, with mentions of original sources, and could still have been a George Clooney "blog" of some sort...although it wouldn't get much of a rep as a blog.

Huffington's just another stupid egotistical ass who knows very little about blogging.