Many of you reading this know Michelle Delio from her time at Outlaw Biker, Tattoo Savage and various Paisano magazines. In the late 1990s she moved from the tattoo world into technology reporting and is a freelance-bordering-on-staff writer for WIRED and other publications. She's currently embroiled in a news fabrication controversy debating whether or not she's making up sources and quotes — generally just color commentary quotes though, not verifiable errors.
A number of sites and journalism ethicists are ripping her to shreds (more, more, more, more) and quite possibly destroying her career, but as far as I can tell they haven't found a single thing where they can say “this is made up” — all they've been able to do is say “we couldn't find this man-on-the-street source she used.” In addition, most of the sources they could find claimed to be quoted accurately and spoke highly of her (although a few couldn't remember being interviewed by her specifically, but that's to be expected — I certainly don't remember everyone anyone I've been interviewed by).
I've worked with Michelle Delio a few times and never had any bad experiences with her, although in this day of interviews-by-email (and thus easy source confirmation) it wouldn't surprise me if she occasionally peppered her articles with made-up color commentary quotes — but to be honest, in these largely fluff articles, I'm not sure if I care about the fake quotes if they're “thematically correct”. This really shows you though that you've got to pathologically document your sources as a journalist…
Post a Comment