DazzlinDonna » Incredibly Stupid

[RANT] Useless Journalistic Tactic of Partial Obscurity Protects No One

Donna — Tue, 25 May 2010 16:23:17 +0000

Look, journalists / bloggers / reporters / rumormongers, if you’re going to share some breaking news via an undisclosed source, don’t bother to obscure the source’s name while still giving tons of clues that makes it easy to figure out who that person is.

Engadget, I’m talking specifically to you at the moment. In this breaking news story yesterday, you so kindly obscured the person’s Twitter ID (presumably to protect her identity), but you made it ridiculously simple for anyone to figure out who tweeted that message about an upcoming iPhone feature.

You not only showed her Twitter picture, but you gave everyone the exact Tweet text which is easily searchable, so figuring out who she is was inevitable.

The poor gal in question apparently had to delete her Twitter account because of this, but you can still see what that Twitter account looked like via a cache of the page. (Screenshot here for when the cache disappears).

My guess is that this might seriously hurt her chances of getting the gig as well. (The same article did the same thing to another person, but one example is enough, I think).

Obviously, we all have to think before we share things online, so I’m not really ranting about the fact that poor Vi’s tweet got spread to the masses via Engadget. She put it out there, so where it ends up after that is fair game, I suppose. But if you’re writing a story and purposely trying to protect someone’s identity by obscuring the name, don’t bother giving away all the necessary clues that will make that protection meaningless.

Two Rant Takeaways:

1. What you share online can come back to haunt you. Think before you share.
2. If your goal is to protect the identity of someone you are writing about, for pete’s sake, do it right.

*Note 1: I figure the damage is already done since Engadget has about 10 bazillion times more readers than I do, so my pointing this out won’t make it any worse.

*Note 2: Thanks to @mvandemar for the awesome P.I. investigative work and tip.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Engadget, journalism, Real-time web, Tweet
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

On being a jerk

Donna — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 21:36:53 +0000

I was a jerk last night. And then, to top it all off, I decided to smoke a cigarette. For those of you who may be new here, or have a short memory, I quit smoking about 2 months ago. Luckily, there’s some sort of super-molecule in a former smoker’s body that reacts badly to a cigarette after quitting. (That’s not a scientific fact, I just made that up, so please don’t harass me for saying that). In any case, that one cigarette:

Tasted terrible while smoking it
Made me sick as a dog about an hour later
Left an aftertaste that got worse and worse

Needless to say, I’m still a FORMER smoker, so I guess some good came out of last night, but I still feel bad that I was a jerk. I need to make up for that. We’re all human, and we sometimes cause pain, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to make things right. So, I’ll be humbly attempting that for some time.

Morals of this story:

Don’t be a jerk.
If you are a jerk, make up for it.
If you smoke, quit.
If you quit, don’t light one up.
If you smoke one after quitting, you’ll feel pain.
If you feel pain after you’ve been a jerk, you deserve it.

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: being a jerk, pain
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.

Getting Paid to State the Obvious

Donna — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 15:14:26 +0000

If you’ve ever wondered where some of the government’s money disappears to, here are a couple of examples. I woke up this morning to see not one, but two news stories on my local news channel that just made me spitting mad. Two separate research studies were done, and while I don’t have proof that they were funded by the government, I’d be willing to bet some government grants were used. In any case, here are the results of these two incredibly informative studies. (Please note that this was sarcasm)

Research Study #1 discovered that helping correct the eyesight of senior citizens does not necessarily prevent them from falling down. Duh! It’s not that they can’t see, you idiots!

Research Study #2 discovered that senior citizens who do things like climbing ladders and cleaning rooftop gutters often fall down, as compared to those senior citizens who sit or lie down all day. Duh!

This makes me so stinking mad. I think I’ll get in on some of this research funding and do some research on senior citizens too. Hmmm…let’s see. I bet I can come up with the test AND the results without ever having to even do the study itself.

Senior citizens more frequently complain about aches and pains than 18-25 year olds. Now…where’s my government funding?

© Donna for DazzlinDonna, 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: aches, pains, research studies, silly
This feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this in your news aggregator/reader or on DazzlinDonna, then the site you are looking at is probably infringing upon my copyright.