A brief splash of honesty

I feel like giving brief kudos to columnist David Carr, who in a sudden attack of disclosure came clean about how he found the sources for two “person on the street” quotations in one of his columns:

Mr. Finesurrey, a sophomore and an Obama supporter at the University of Wisconsin whom I found in the process of researching this column (translation: he’s a friend of my daughter).

And:

When Sara Verkuilen, 22, a senior at Edgewood College in Madison (translation: my daughter’s roommate) is looking for political news, she goes with CNN, but not because of the gadgetry.

I don’t read Mr. Carr regularly, so maybe he is always this scrupulous. Regardless, kudos to him for being transparent about one of the more misleading traditions in journalism: Using people from within one’s own social circle to comment on a trend or current event.

It would be nice to see his colleagues follow suit more often.

posted by Sra. Bibliotecaria ⋅ tagged ethics, media

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