I've gotten a fair amount of criticism in response to my first post about the death of Bradley Ginsburg '13.
The blog post was titled, "Report: Suicide off Thurston Bridge."
I posted immediately after hearing from a house-mate that someone had jumped off the Thurston Bridge, and that emergency crews were at the scene. Nothing had been posted on the Sun or IJ websites, so his report was all I had in hand.
As more facts have come to light, it appears that suicide is simply one of several plausible explanations for Ginsburg's death. This much should be clear to anyone who has followed the case in any media outlets.
I have not changed the language of my initial post, as it accurately reflects what I heard at that point in time. The idea of a blog is that authors can write follow-up posts to qualify and correct earlier entries. If and when a definitive cause of death is released, I will blog about it. But I will not scrub evidence of previous possible error.
I shouldn't have to say this, but obviously I had no malicious motive in using the word "suicide" at that point in time, and no disrespect is intended towards the deceased, nor towards his family. I wish them peace as they begin to cope with this difficult situation.
As always, thanks for reading, and I welcome any comments.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
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I agree with your stance. Good journalism ethics at practice. What has been reported shall remain that way, and newer reports will contain newer and more accurate information.
ReplyDeleteIf you aren't going to take out the word "suicide", at least update the post to say that there is no evidence that the death was a suicide. Those who read the initial post without reading this one will jump to unnecessary conclusions based on what your housemate (who sounds very qualified to judge a cause of death ... ) overheard.
ReplyDelete"Anonymous" has a fair point. I respect your stated intent, but there are other ways. I wish I could remember where I saw it so I could provide a link, but earlier today I saw an article that had a box saying "Correction: This article originally stated, erroneously, that ___." They had fixed the error, but left behind an admission that it had started out wrong. That's in contrast to the Southwest Airlines blog post about the Kevin Smith brouhaha that got quietly changed to fix an error, without so much as an updated time stamp.
ReplyDeleteIf an official cause of death is released, and it is not ruled a suicide, I will attach a correction to the original post.
ReplyDeleteand until then you will leave an assumption made by yourself and a highly qualified random person up, as show for your "journalism ethics". bravo.
ReplyDeletebelittle the ego, you're a good writer with lots of insight, take a chip of advice from mhaithaca: be sensitive about a matter that is sensitive rather than cloaking your stubbornness with ethics.