Today I stumbled across a article (via a article about ethics on Scientific American) written by Caleb Hannan at Grantland.com (some kind of Golf writers site I guess) The article is pretty much about how the writer investigated the maker of a new golf club, found out she had lied about her history, and education, and decided to out her to the world as trans. Oh, and she killed herself before the article was printed after trying her hardest to keep the writer from publishing it.
Now it's not all cut and dry, Dr. V did lie about her education, (she claimed to have graduated from MIT) and parts of her past, (she claimed to have worked secretly for the government on the B2 bomber) but Hannan takes positive glee in outing her to the world as, gasp! a former man!!!! He seems to feel no responsibility for the fact that he most likely contributed to her suicide, or the fact that he harassed her for 8 months*, he even goes on to call his article an "eulogy" for Dr. V.
As you can guess their are people both outraged by this and smugly sanctimonious about how reporters have to tell the "truth" about "deception". I won't link any of that since it's likely to just depress people that asshat's like that are out there, if you want to find people's reactions google can find them for you.
Here is a link to the original article - http://grantland.com/features/a-mysterious-physicist-golf-club-dr-v/
And here is a response to it I found while looking around on the internet (I don't really know much about the site it's on, I just googled info about the first article) http://www.shakesville.com/2014/01/careless-cruel-and-unaccountable.html
*I think that's what I remember readin
Edit: Here is a link to a very good analyses of the article in question, and why it does not meet ethical standards of reporting, i.e. the guy is a bastard. http://mariadahvanaheadley.wordpress.com/2014/01/18/sinatras-cold-is-contagious-hostile-subjects-vulnerable-sources-the-ethics-of-outing/
Comments
Some people
see no link between cause and effect. Hopefully, one day, some equally nice person will contribute to his distress and then perhaps he'll understand - though I doubt it. It's the same sort of mentality that foments religious persecution or disgusting deeds on behalf of whichever god is convenient. I guess there will always be scumbags as long as there are people.
Angharad
There could be a crime here.
Given how evil the members of the press are. I would check to see if the investigator that hounded Dr. V for eight months did not happen to short the stock of company making the golf club.
Some people take delight in
Some people take delight in causing others misery. There is no place in public service or any other position where trust can be violated for such low-life vermin. Pond-scum is more ethical than such worms. I can't begin to express my disgust at this type of so-called reporting.
I hope he rots in hell for what he did. I'm almost beyond words with anger at this type of crap.
Imagination is more important than knowledge
A. Einstein
People could stop it if they wanted to
Dear Elrod,
Given that some reporters are really horrible people, who harass people, behave arrogantly, invade peoples'privacy at very sad times in the most rude and thoughtless manner, and etc. etc., but if people who like to kid them selves that they are "good" people would stop buying and reading such gutterpress articles as appear in certain newspapers (we all know which ones so I will not name them here as they do not deserve the publicity) then people would soon see such reporters and such articles disappear.
When I was growing up (some time before The Flood) there was a Sunday "News"paper that published smut and scandal disguised as news, and certain relatives, who felt they held the moral high ground, used to read the naughty bits out to each other with great glee and then make remarks about how disgraceful it all was. I asked my Mummy why they did that and she told me it was because they wanted to be like those people but were too afraid to do it themselves so reading about others doing such things made up for it. That sounded a bit unlikely to me so I asked one of them directly, which led to a row between them and my Mummy, and we stopped going to see them after that.
That same publication recently ceased to exist, which although partly due to fines following a court case, was mainly because falling sales were making it unprofitable. I think that indicates that fewer people these days want to read about other peoples' difficulties - these days we all have more of our own to worry about!
Briar
i dunno...
After reading your comment i went into the article ready to pounce.. but after reading i've gotta be honest.
He did his job and not much more..
Dr. V's blantent and exaggerated lies is what caused the article to be published and had little to do with her transgender issues.
Of course we know that's not 100% true, afterall she lied, in part,*because* of them... but lies of that scale, you'd be stupid to think your going to get away with them. Furthermore after reading this i'm thinking that there was much more wrong with Dr V's head than what your typical trans would have. She sounded to be at the very minimum, an untreated bi-polar sufferer. (and if you've ever known anyone bi-polar.. their bad enough WITH their medicine... and without, well you begin to entertain thoughts of murder)
But was it his job? Why would
But was it his job? Why would it be his job to out someone, to tell the 'truth'? He know she had problems and she had attempted suicide before. He comments about how erratic her last email was, but still to him the story was more important than the person. He violated many of the ethical standards you are suppose to follow in journalism. Of course, not many journalist follow that standard much these days but that doesn't make a difference. I really urge you to read the last article I linked, it can explain much better than I can what was wrong with what he did.
And it's pretty telling that he had no trouble outing her to her investor, not about her not having gone to MIT, not about not having worked on secret government projects, but about her being trans. It's clear he sees her being trans as being as much of a egregious deception as all the rest.
Reporters have lost any sense of moral responsibility
In many, many cases, the story morphs into 'how can we destroy or damage' the subject of the story. She set limits; he violated them. He knew it would be damaging to her, yet he continued. Where was his moral responsibility? He had none. Few reporters do. The story is the be-all and end-all, and damn the consequences.
I hate the media. they're all a bunch of irresponsible egotistical jerks. And that's the best I can say about them.
Imagination is more important than knowledge
A. Einstein
And that is exactly why I stopped working in the media
For several years I ran an award winning small town newspaper and did some freelance journalism and photography for larger newspapers as well. I held myself to a standard where the story was important but so were the lives affected by that story As time progressed I noticed that very few of my colleagues in the news showed any type of responsibility in their articles. It was all about the headlines, about selling newspapers and getting the big scoop that nobody else could no matter how damaging it was and whether it was actually true or not. A lot don't even check their facts these days before running slanderous stories.
It made me sick to be a part of an industry that was more about making money and creating good headlines than it was about news. That, and constantly seeing so much of the bad parts of human nature every day via news articles really took away any faith i had in humanity so I gave up on it all and decided to move on to other things. I write fiction now, and frankly it's much more truthful, insightful, and responsible than what a lot of reporters write about these days.
Don't take me too seriously. I'm just kitten around. :3
You know, the thing is that
You know, the thing is that even in the guy's article he says that the club was good, and the investor, and some pro golfers, liked it too. The club only started being bad for the reporter after he found out Dr. V's past. He states that it must have been power of self confidence that made the club work well, but I have to wonder if it isn't the opposite. That since he decided that the inventor of the club couldn't possible have done anything worthy, he expected the putter to do horrible, so that's just what it did. Did he even ever have experts look at it? Get scientific evaluation? doesn't sound like it from the article.
So in the end a woman makes a great putter that everyone likes, but it turns out she didn't have the education and experiences she claimed to have had. It makes you wonder if she hadn't been trans would it have been a different story. Would it instead have been "self taught inventor, with grit and determination to do what ever it took, created new putter that revolutionized the sport"?
Probably would have gotten a movie deal out of it.
I posted the following to the editors of Grantland...
You may want to add your voices as well...
Total lack of social responsibility and humanity.
Olaf Ulfson [email protected]
to editors
Your reporter, Caleb Hannon's disgustingly smug article drove someone who had faced a difficult life to finally end it. In his article, word of which is now making the rounds of social media sites, he seems to take great glee in driving this poor woman to her death. What he wrote, and you published is short, barely, of being a hate crime. The fact that you published this story puts your own morality in question. But, hey, anything for a buck, right?
What sorry excuses for human beings you must be... Well, be proud, you got your story and drove a woman to her death: Are you all proud and happy now? Does helping to destroy a persons life make you feel all warm inside?
I'll not read your rag again and I'll encourage others not to. I will also repost this comment to social media, to news sites, to the DOJ, and to Human rights organizations. Human rights... obviously a concept you don't share. It's too late to help Dr, V. Only you could have done that, but you chose not to.
Disgusting!
HERE IS THEIR CONTACT INFORMATION:
Contact
E-MAIL
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
REGULAR MAIL
Grantland
1101 S. Figueroa St.
Bldg. A
Los Angeles, CA 90015
THE SPORTS GUY
To send Bill Simmons an e-mail, click here.
Feel free to drop us a line at any of the above addresses, and be sure to follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
We are each exactly as God made us. God does not make mistakes!
Gender rights are the new civil rights!
Sponsors
You would do better to complain to the blog's sponsors, ESPN. They are a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, and might be a bit more sensitive to such criticism.
John B.
Published after her suicide
Do notice that the blog article was only published after her suicide. Libel and privacy law is much laxer in the USA than in other countries, but even so I would expect that the legal advice was that the blog could not publish the article in its present form while she was still alive. It was therefore necessary that she commit suicide in order that the "journalist" could publish the article in the form he wished. He could then always pretend that it was a eulogy, of course.
John B.