My first clarification

At the SPJ conference today (well, technically yesterday now), Al Siegal, of the Siegal Commission that investigated Jayson Blair, made an interesting comment at the ethics panel presentation. I'm going to be completely unethical now and reconstruct his quote, but he was talking about reporters who objected to having corrections run on their stories.

"I have a hard time convincing them that it's not a moral failure to have a correction run," he said (or so he said once I've stuffed the words back into his mouth). "It's a chance to make the story more accurate."

See, now I know that's not right, since the way he said it, it actually didn't sound like a moral failure. At any rate, all of that is by way of introducing my first correction, from a "source" whose sentiments, she claimed, I misrepresented. I quote here from Rachael Goldfarb's email:

"I'm flattered and touched by the dedication (although my "claiming to like what [you] write" is arguably a poor word choice since I do indeed enjoy your writing very much -- I'm not claiming to; it's fact.)"

In my own defense (and modesty), I say that I had to regard what she said as merely a claim, since I couldn't fathom her liking my writing as much as she (that word again) claims to. (I'm tempted here to use a smiley, but it's much to early in the blog to resort to emoticons.)