Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!torsqnt!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!ubc-cs!grads.cs.ubc.ca!manis
From: manis@grads.cs.ubc.ca (Vincent Manis)
Newsgroups: can.general
Subject: Re: The Newspaper Effect.
Message-ID: <5019@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Date: 19 Sep 89 21:23:14 GMT
References: <141@isgtec.UUCP> <89Sep19.123413edt.2449@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
Sender: news@cs.ubc.ca
Reply-To: manis@grads.cs.ubc.ca (Vincent Manis)
Distribution: can
Organization: The Invisible City of Kitezh
Lines: 33

In article <89Sep19.123413edt.2449@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
gh@ai.toronto.edu (Graeme Hirst) writes:

>Cynicism is fine (I do it for a living), but don't let it overwhelm you.
>Not everyone in the world is a bozo.

I've been interviewed lots of times over the years, both on political
issues and technical ones. I've generally found that the journalists
I've dealt with have been woefully ill-informed on whatever they were
interviewing me about, but generally were attempting to do as good a job
as they could. My cynicism mostly comes from editorial policies which
emphasise the sensational (the Vancouver Sun, for example, gave a large
amount of space the other day to a loony priest in Dayton, OH, who
thinks that Jesus wore formal dress, but didn't bother to mention the
ACL conference this summer), and which trivialise things (CBC Radio,
which is generally outstanding, once gave me 30 seconds to describe
computing in the '90's).

I always try to be helpful when dealing with a journalist. It isn't
his/her fault...





____________  Vincent Manis                    | manis@cs.ubc.ca
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