I would think that calling someone "a hero" is
'unncessarily diplomatic language,' and such a
designation would require citation. In this case, the
citation is his 'founding of a First Amendment
defending organization.'
Its important to remember how trust foundations in
general work in the U.S. They largely exist for the
purposes of 1) financial self-sustenance 2) lobbying,
and 3) public awareness. The last two have relatively
low overhead, and the first has no real ties to the
cause which it claims to represent. Hence we have
various organzations that represent various causes
which may or may not have some vague connection with
the goals they claim to support.
Bjorn's language was indeed unnecessarily undiplomiac
and needing of correction. But an examination of
Siegenthaler's language in reference to Wikipedia as a
whole likewise shows a lacking of the "kind and
thoughful" traits claimed to be in private discourse.
More to the point, Seigenthaler's transcripted
comments arent evokative of someone who has a deep
understanding of the U.S. First Amendment issues in
question:
SEIGENTHALER: "...can I just say, where I'm worried
about this leading. Next year we go into an election
year. Every politician is going to find himself or
herself subjected to the same sort of outrageous
commentary that hit me, and hits others.
"I'm afraid we're going to get regulated media as a
result of that. And I -- I tell you, I think if you
can't fix it, both fix the history as well as the
biography pages, I think it's going to be in real
trouble, and we're going to have to be fighting to
keep the government from regulating you."
People can decide for themselves if they think that
some "libel" (i.e. 'uncorrected cruft') in one article
will equate to a wider climate of presumably dire and
draconian "government" regulation. I think the claim
is beyond ridiculous, and throwing Kelly's little
laundry list of media errors into the equasion,
Siegenthaler's comments are almost indistinguishable
from an attack on *free media from the point of view
of *corporate media.
No doubt he is sincere, but his interests *seem to be
in protecting the institutional, and not the emergent.
In that context, being diplomatic to Siegenthaler for
sake of converting him to understand the free media
model is indeed a wise course of action.
Stevertigo
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales(a)wikia.com> wrote:
BJörn Lindqvist wrote:
I certainly had no idea who this Seigenthaler
dude
was and
wouldn't have been able to spot the errors in
the
article. Now I know
- he's a litigous asshole looking for
revenge.
This is absolutely false and you should be ashamed
of yourself for
saying it.
John Seigenthaler, Sr. is a hero. He founded an
organization devoted to
the defense of the First Amendment. In all my
interactions with him, he
has been kind and thoughtful.
He is very much *not* litigious. (He never
threatened to sue Wikipedia,
and he specifically chose not to pursue legal action
to force the ISP to
cough up the name of the person who libelled him.)
--Jimbo
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