Honestly, it's pretty shitty to ask someone for a comment on a friday afternoon and publish on a monday morning pretending that they didn't reply when you likely gave them zero business hours to reply.
Given that there was no new security vulnerability, it would have been completely reasonable to ask for a comment at the same time as hitting publish and note that they’d been asked for a comment and as of that time had not responded. Just as long as the post is updated if they do respond.
“Real” news sources do this all the time. There’s a difference between asking for a comment on an issue and responsible disclosure of a previously new vulnerability.
> to ask for a comment at the same time as hitting publish and note that they’d been asked for a comment
No, this is not responsible. The reader is not aware of the time difference and cannot distinguish between a lack of appropriate time to respond and the organization being subversive. Given the context, the usually implies the latter.
I wouldn't ever want this to legally be an issue, but we do have to recognize that a lot of language is implicit and that also matters. If you did such a think I believe it would be more ethical to write something along the lines of
> we reached out to <x> at the time of publishing and will update when we receive a response.
While one could still presume subversive behavior, I think we can all recognize that this is at least less of an implicit blame. For more accuracy, you can even put the date. I've seen this format before
> On <date> the <y>-news team reached out to <x> and will update when we receive a response.
This ensures that the reader is able to properly understand the time differential and the implications. Remember that reading articles is highly asynchronous. You may be reading them the day of or a month later. If you read that line and <date> was the same day as today or even yesterday, you wouldn't think anything suspicious. But if it is a week later or a month later you have quite a good reason to believe <x> is being subversive.
Not asking is fine, asking is nice, asking when you know it's a period they won't realistically be able to respond just to be able to list you didn't get a response is shitty.
Not as shitty as some of the stuff the article finds of course, but still a completely unnecessary callout that detracts from the message on said stuff a bit.
I report the non-response directly after reporting how long I gave them to respond, it's not in any way misleading or underhanded.
You are free to think that I didn't give them enough time to respond, since "enough time" is subjective. But the amount of time I did give them was objectively reported.
It's now been the best part of 4 business days, and they still haven't responded, nor indicated an intent to respond. There's no way I was going to let them delay me indefinitely.
1. You didn't have to ask them for any comment, that was a courtesy on your part.
2. A weekend is very short time to give comment. If it's on such short notice, you'd generally call them to ask your questions on the phone or swiftly set up written correspondence.
3. One or two weeks, or even more, is a common time schedule for comments from the party being investigated when it comes to investigative journalism.
4. There is probably less than 0% chance that any other investigator would have published the scoop before you.
Sometimes "it's just reporting the facts" can be done with a lean in itself. You may disagree, that's fine too of course, but this isn't a plain jane "Rabbit did not immediately respond with comments" it has a timeline omitting some facts like like starting on a Friday and is intermixed with commentary on the reachout. Not anything that's false, just also not maybe as neutral as it set out to be. Also not the end of the world, it's still a good article overall.
fwiw, my article does not set out to be "neutral". It reflects my research-backed personal opinions of Rabbit Inc. and their products (strong negative sentiment) and it would be disingenuous of me to leave that out.
Nonetheless, I reject the idea that saying "July 12th" instead of "Friday" is lying by omission.
It wouldn't be instead of, rather both. I.e. Friday doesn't have full context nor does July 12th. It also wouldn't have to get rid of the other personal commentary, just not put it in the section about having reached out for comment. That said you're more than right in that nothing says the article must set out to be neutral.
At least you're honest about it being a hit piece and not a journalistic endeavor, but you should at least feel a little shame about your own shitty behavior.
Same issue as saying "the [party] didn't immediately respond". It's technically accurate and objective, but to me personally, it has an undertone of pointing out "just another shady way" this entity that's reported on is acting - when really it isn't.
You might disagree, because you might know what situation might prompt such an event, because you're a journalist, which is fine. But also, you're not writing for journalists; you're writing for the general public, such as myself.
Speaking for myself, if the article was written specifically for me, I'd consider such statements to be a blunder on the journalist's part, at best, and a very deliberate literary technique to ellicit a stronger emotional reaction, at worst. You're ofc not writing for me, but maybe you find the feedback interesting nevertheless.
I learned that when they write “did not immediately respond to our request” in the newspaper it means that the journalist called and no one picked up, then went to print.
When they write “did not respond to our request” it means they called or emailed and waited a few hours, possibly the next day.
Not really the same as what happened here, but thought it would be interesting to mention it here.
>when they write “did not immediately respond to our request” in the newspaper it means that the journalist called and no one picked up, then went to print.
So the act of calling becomes 'the request'.
Reminds me of 'but i replied to your email'.
Yeah, but you didn't answer the questions in the email.
Because you look like a god damn idiot if you do that. Maybe people here don't care about that, but real humans in the real world do care about that kind of thing.
