Thursday, November 05, 2009

When People Can't Remember Their Own Exhortations

Almost two years ago, I commented on something Aaron Lerner wrote. It wasn't fully correct and Aaron was quite upset and expressed himself forcefully.

The main point he made was why didn't I contact him first to clarify the matter.

He was right.

Usually I do not comment on my wife's blog posts. Her mind is her mind, her thoughts are her thoughts and I respect a person's independence.

But we have a storm that is overflowing out of the teacup.

As my wife explains here, just before copying a poll that Aaron had published, she made her own comment. She then copied Aaron's content and also indented them as a quotation.

A JPost reporter unfortunately missed the graphics and reported that what my wife had said was actually what Aaron had supposedly said but that was untrue.

Aaron got justifiably upset.

And he wrote a letter to the JPost which was published as a "Correction".

But he didn't first ask my wife about the matter and so this appears in the JPost:

The article quotes a statement posted in Lerner's name on the blog Shiloh Musings, including the assertion that "Israeli 'justice' is always different for right-wing Jews." Lerner has told the Post that this entire statement is fabricated; he did not make it.


But what doesn't appear there is that it was the error not of my wife but of the reporter.

That's too bad.

And it's too bad Aaron didn't follow his own suggestion to call first, contact the person and clarify.

2 comments:

Batya said...

The reporter even spelled Lerner's first name incorrectly. That's a sure sign that there's sloppy work in the Jerusalem Post.

Thanks for this post.

Batya said...

Lerner sent out a clarification, which is just perfect. I can feast on that. My life is so complicated now. I'm lucky enough to spell my own name correctly.

Let's consider this finished.