I thought I’d found a decent news outlet. Their commentary/opinion stuff tended conservative to libertarian, but the news segments seemed to make the attempt to stick to facts, with a minimum of speculation or “interpretation.”
Turns out I was wrong.
OANN ran a story titled “Guardians of Suspected Parkland School Shooter Testify in Court” (March 8, 2018). Since “guardian” has a specific legal meaning Florida law, I contacted OANN to be sure they were using the correct term, or if they had information that the Sneads were “guardians.” I never got an answer.
But if you clicked that link, you’ll see they killed the story.
And republished it as “Couple Who Took in Suspected Parkland School Shooter Testify in Court,” with the exact same date/timestamp, including the previous “UPDATED” time. No indication that they changed “guardians” to “couple who took in.”
So I contacted them again, with the following (details edited down from what I wanted to send to meet their 1,000 character limit).
I write for The Zelman Partisans and also edit their weekly newsletter and aggregated news stories. I will no longer use you as a source. You have edited a story to remove the reference to “guardians.” I was good with you trying to be accurate.
You didn’t make any acknowledgement on the page that the story had been altered; not even changing the “UPDATED” timestamp.
That puts you in the same low class as Ken Foskett of AJC.com who altered a story that fellow news people manufactured and transferred an illegal machinegun, only when they thought they were reported to the ATF.
If you cannot be trusted not to change published stories because you don’t wish to be caught in inaccuracies, then you cannot be a trusted source for my work.
Carl “Bear” Bussjaeger
Author: Net Assets, Bargaining Position, The Anarchy Belt, and more
http://www.bussjaeger.org
Writer for The Zelman Partisans (“Jews. No compromise. No surrender.”)
http://www.zelmanpartisans.com
OANN has been deleted from my news source list. I suggest you do the same.
Random Acts of Gibberish 