The sobbing Tilly saga continues to sprout new limbs.
A writer for the Independent, Emma Guinness, wrote the predictable snotty story about the big meany writer and the poor tragic Waterstones worker who raged about the big meany writer in public and got fired. Guinness is claiming – also in public – to have invited Dalcher to comment on the hit piece about her. The problem there is that she seems to have sent her invitation(s) to random people instead of to Dalcher.
It’s almost as if the “give people who claim to be trans whatever they demand” movement attracts people who are startlingly bad at human relations.
Comments
6 responses to “Invisible ink”
Reading between the lines here, I’m guessing that this is roughly what happened:
1) Dalcher has an email address for “media contact” listed somewhere, that’s intended for things like interview requests, which probably isn’t checked constantly, and might even go to a publicist or her publisher;
2) Guinness did the thing many reporters do of contacting someone for comment like an hour before they’re going to publish (even if it’s a non-urgent story) so they can check that off their list and then dutifully write in their story that “X declined to respond to inquiries” without disclosing the time frame.
I’ve encountered (2) personally once or twice — my sense was it wasn’t anything nefarious on those occasions, just a reporter who procrastinated a bit and then expected their lack of planning to become my/my client’s emergency.
Off topic: New prime minister takes care not to misgender his cabinet.
Screechy, thanks, that’s informative.
I must say, if reporters do that I think it is somewhat nefarious – saying “X declined to comment” when X wasn’t really invited to comment. “Inviting” someone at 2 a.m. their time and going to press an hour later is not really inviting. It’s way too close to lying.
PJH – That’s downright weird! It was fixed a few hours after the screenshots were taken. Somebody playing games maybe.
I often see either “declined to respond,” or “did not respond,” or “did not respond in time to meet deadline.” The latter is more honest and less ambiguous. Declined implies an active refusal. Did not respond is highly ambiguous and IMO shouldn’t be used.
Yeah, some outlets handle it better than others — I’ve seen “did not immediately respond to a request for comment.”
And it’s situational. If there’s breaking news, and a corporation, government agency, or political campaign with umpteen paid spokespeople and crisis managers don’t respond to a request for comment, that’s perhaps indicative of a decision not to comment.
But yeah, if a reporter is working on a story about something that happened a week ago, and waits until two hours before their deadline to invite comment, that’s not cool.