Thank you Malcolm and Mendy,
Yes, the Guardian joins the NewYork Times on our list of newspapers to
avoid. Personally the only publication I will give an interview to
anymore is Astronomy Magazine. Thank you David Eicher!
Maybe the UK members of the MetList (Graham, Martin, Jim, Peter,.....)
will contact the Guardian, the Auction House and Rob Elliott and
explain to them how wrong they are.
And Chelyabinsk, I have plenty of them, the 3kilos mass I presented on
"Picture of the Day" is sold, but I have more (thin-sections too!) and
yes, they certainly can be shipped from Russia.
Anne M. Black
www.IMPACTIKA.com
[email protected]
-----Original Message-----
From: Malcolm S Pringle <[email protected]>
To: meteorite-list <[email protected]>
Sent: Mon, Aug 19, 2013 9:41 am
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Meteorite hunter takes £10,000 rock to
auction - And a particularly BAD quote
Hi, all --
Further to Mendy's comments -- I'm a list newbie (I joined to help
acquire a
mini-teaching collection to use in K-12 schools in the Boston area) --
but I
had seen the original article, and found it amusing enough that I almost
pointed it out to you all a couple of days ago:
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/aug/16/hambleton-chelyabinsk-meteorite-auction-rob-elliott
In other words, this was in the Guardian, supposedly one of the more
reputable
newspapers worldwide (for example, the lead investigatory paper in the
Snowden/NSA stories), attributed to the Press Association (supposedly
one of
the UK's leading news organizations, http://www.pressassociation.com).
There
wasn't an option to comment on the article directly, and the Press
Association
doesn't appear to have an ombudsman, but here is the press officer /
communications manager, in case anyone with more experience/local UK
perspective wants to take up the gauntlet:
[email protected]
The most amusing misinformation seemed to be in the figure caption:
"Other items to be auctioned include one of the only pieces of the
Russian
meteorite Chelyabinsk to have made it to the west"
[well, not quite accurate, with like 300+ active auctions on ebay as of
this
morning alone ...]
;-)
As usual, reiterates that we have to be careful what info we get from
even the
"good" news outlets. Also, as Mendy suggests, how careful we need to
be when
we ourselves are the source of information?
-- Malcolm
Quoting Mendy Ouzillou <[email protected]>:
http://www.astrowatch.net/2013/08/meteorite-hunter-takes-10000-rock-to.html
Dear list members,
This is an interesting article but what really caught my eye was the
following quote: "The Russian government told the local residents
that they would arrest anyone selling pieces of the meteorite
overseas, so my contact had to disguise the airmail package and mix
the meteorites with pieces of electronic equipment to hide them,"
The intricacies of Russian export laws are as dense as as any Russian
novel and less decipherable as highlighted by some of our own
conversations regarding the topic. This quote unfortunately removes
any doubt that the Chelyabinsk meteorites were smuggled out and only
reinforces the misconception that our (a)vocation is run like a black
market.
I am sure that the actual interview was filled with more details and
clarifying comments, but that is clearly NOT what was printed.
Dealing with the press is a skill like any other that requires
training and experience. At the very least ask for the questions in
advance and respond by email if at all possible. The most important
thing to do is to ask for the ability to review and make edits to the
article BEFORE agreeing to doing the interview.
Though you will figure out easily who was quoted, this is not about
the individual. I was not there during the interview (obviously) and
can't say what was or was not said. I really just want to highlight
this story as a cautionary tale.
As a final thought, not all reporters are bad or out to get people.
They have a job to do and are motivated by a different set of
requirements than what we may understand. They want a good story and
you (may) want the public recognition. This is a symbiotic
relationship, but if you do not understand how the game is played,
you will likely get played.
Sincerely,
Mendy Ouzillou
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======================================================================
If you don't feed the teachers, they will eat the children.
Anonymous teacher, told to Linda Albert, Cooperative Discipline, 1996.
======================================================================
But none of that will transform education if we fail to cherish --
and challenge -- the human heart that is the source of good teaching.
Parker J Palmer, The Courage to Teach, 1998.
======================================================================
Malcolm S Pringle, Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Massachusetts Inst of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Ave Bldg 54-1210
Cambridge, MA 02139-4307 USA Cell: 617-319-6584
======================================================================
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______________________________________________
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