Talk:Stolen Honor

Kizzle's tag-team revert ?

Kizzle's tag-team revert just now [1] has the appearance of bad faith, to me. By his own admission he stated that only 80% bothered him, but he reverted 100%. That and the way he conveniently RV'd after Gamaliel max'd out for today is not mertious, in my view. Rex071404 ^{216.153.214.94} 21:20, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't see where I have three reverts today, but that's besides the point. If Kizzle disagrees with your edits and agrees with mine, why should he not revert you? Gamaliel 21:25, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Sherwood's credentials

Cut from article:

Carlton Sherwood, the producer of Stolen Honor is an acclaimed journalist and Vietnam War veteran. He is currently a private military corporation executive. In 1980, Mr Sherwood was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for his contributions as part of the Gannett News Service team.

This should be in the Sherwood article. Does not need repetition here. Uncle Ed 20:12, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Well, actually, yes it does. The fact that he shared in a Pulitzer Prize for his journalistic activities is relevant to any ventures he engages in thereafter which are or which purport to be journalistic, just as the fact that he conducted what purported to be an independent investigation while he was actually giving the subject access to and influence in it is relevant to any other purported "independent investigations".

I'm sure you have only the good of Wikipedia in mind, Ed, but some people are not so honorable. They wouldn't see that you're merely trying to keep the article free of clutter by cutting out what you see as redundant elaboration of Sherwood's credentials -- which are, as credentials suggests, part of the reason people might give credence to Sherwood's claims. Instead, they would simply see it as a free license to rip out any reference to the reasons why someone might be skeptical of Sherwood's claims. I'm sure you agree that it isn't NPOV -- not furthering the goal of representing all sides fairly -- to let one side say "Well, if my side elects not to present any reasoning why we believe Sherwood is telling the complete and whole truth, that means we get to remove anything the other side says about why they believe his work must be approached with caution." So I'm sure you'll understand why I'm restoring the information about Sherwood's credentials to the article; we don't want to put temptation in anyone's way. -- Antaeus Feldspar 23:11, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Okay, but merely repeating information is not the best way to do this. We should explain in the article that people question Sherwood's objectivity. We might also point out that the people questioning his objectivity disagree with his conclusions - with opens up the possibility that they are (A) "attacking him" because of his conclusions - as opposed to (B) questioning his conclusion because they *gasp* suddenly discovered something fishy about his credentials.

It's the old chicken and egg problem. Which came first?

Also, I have yet to verify that Frontline's claim is a fact, let alone that the claim if true proves their point.

Is it a general principle that when investigating one's former employer, a journalist NEVER communicates with them in a non-hostile mode? I mean, is Sherwood some kind of idiot who would spend a year or more researching something, only to throw away the scoop of the century by violating journalistic ethics by tipping his hand to "the enemy"?

Remember, we're talking about high-stakes politics here. This was the same campaign where CBS tried to pull on October surprise to discredit Kerry's opponent - a bit of advocacy journalism.

Anyway, the question you and I are discussing is not "Is Sherwood's anti-Kerry video accurate" but "How can we represent the controversy over its accuracy, in an unbiased way?" Uncle Ed 15:48, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

"Repeating information is not the best way to do this" -- I disagree. Placing information where it is relevant and gives context is a good thing and as we have seen, it is relevant here. What seems irrelevant here is speculation on the possibility that 100% of people who doubt Sherwood's claims did so before they found out anything about his credentials. Most people who give any thought to the chicken-and-egg problem aren't trying to argue that eggs should be mentioned only in the chicken article and not in any other chicken-related article.

What is also irrelevant is the speculation that Frontline's investigation was flawed -- since it's submitted with absolutely no evidence that this was the case, only with an argument that if Frontline's investigation was flawed, then it would support the conclusion that some people would prefer to believe. The way you phrase your rhetorical question, Ed, makes one wonder whether you've looked into Frontline's report at all, let alone looked into it enough to have any basis for suggesting that they got it wrong.

You ask "Is it a general principle that when investigating one's former employer, a journalist NEVER communicates with them in a non-hostile mode?" Well, that's a straw man. No one ever said "Oh! We caught Sherwood communicating with the subject of his review in a non-hostile manner! His investigation is proven non-independent!" What they did turn up is written evidence that Sherwood sent the manuscript to the subject of his investigation and they said "we want this changed and this changed." If Sherwood's response had been "I'll investigate whether those 'corrections' are in fact correct and publish them if my research corroborates," there'd be much less controversy. It's the fact that Sherwood said "okay, I'll make the changes you told me to make" which led to so many questions about whether the investigation fulfilled Sherwood's claims for it as fully independent.

Yes, the question is "How can we represent the controversy over Stolen Honor's accuracy, in an unbiased way?" Jumping to the conclusion that Sherwood is a journalist beyond reproach who would never violate journalistic ethics and that only partisan opponents could possibly believe otherwise is not the answer. -- Antaeus Feldspar 17:46, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Agreed: Wikipedia should not draw that conclusion. Let's try to nail down what the various parties have said about Sherwood. Oh, and while we are at it, let's try to nail down what various parties have said about Kerry. This looks like an intricate example of two sides calling each other liars. Uncle Ed 22:20, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

TDC's edits

re: stopping the article dead for a big laundry list of every single individual interviewed in the movie so as to drive away the maximum number of readers before disclosing that one of those individuals happened to be Kenneth Cordier -- already discussed. Nunh-uh. The official website will do a much better job than we can of going into that exhaustive level of detail; after all, that's where the list is copied from. As for changing the language to imply that the only ones whose actions put pressure on Sinclair were "Large Democrat union pension funds", that is not supported by either the old article or the new one. -- Antaeus Feldspar 03:24, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, we don't need every individual in the movie. Also agree that one wasn't causal to another, both the advertisers and democrat union funds withdrew independently as far to my knowledge. --kizzle 03:59, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

So let me get this strait, you are both arguing that factual information about people who were in the movie deserves less space than partisan bullshit? Secondly, the information about union pension funds is documented, un;ess you have another source. DTC 04:59, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

No, but we know that Staples pulled out because of customer complaints, not because of the Democratic-leaning pension funds. --kizzle 06:27, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I tend to agree with AF and kizzle. I'm not adamantly opposed to the list, but if we do include it, a chunk of raw data like that belongs in its own section towards the end, not dropped in the middle of a section near the beginning. Gamaliel 05:47, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree about the list of names -- it's not lead section material. As for the "information" about union pension funds, what's "documented" according to TDC's citation is that one anonymous source has asserted that "[b]ig institutions, including some unions and pension funds, pressured their fund managers to dump Sinclair's stock ...." Even if we take the anonymous source as totally reliable, he or she says only that there was pressure to sell. It appears that the pressure was not exclusively from union pension funds. Whether the pressure resulted in any actual sales is not stated. Finally, there is no such thing as a "Democrat union". As a minor item of usage, I pointed out to TDC last August that the use of "Democrat" as an adjective is a right-wing solecism. (See more extensive discussion here.) Beyond that, the description would have to be much more nuanced (are these unions allegedly affiliated with the Democratic Party, or simply more likely to conclude that Democratic candidates are the ones who'll best further the interests of the under-$100,000-per-year crowd?) Also, the very next sentence in the Newsweek article reports similar financial concerns among many other Wall Street types, who tend to be Republicans. Picking and choosing some facts to convey an impression of a vast left-wing conspiracy is not NPOV. JamesMLane 08:08, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Including a list of people in the film is valid for a documentary. 70.85.195.229 05:03, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

This article does not meet any meaningful scholastic standards

This article is really little more than a political debate between two sides of the political spectrum using standard web debating tactics, while failing any basic test for scholastic merit. As it is now, much of the article resembles an ad hominem attack on Sherwood---suggesting the possibility of a bias and calling into question his journalistic skills, while exploring nothing from the movie that was relevant. Details of Sherwood's life not relevant to this article, really belong in the Wiki entry on Sherwood, and are largely irrelevant to the stated topic of this article.

I believe that the main thrust of the article should have been a review of the contents of the movie, and an examination of which aspects are one-sided or inaccurate. -- clt510 16:44, 10 Sep 2006 (UTC)

Lead section overly long

The lead section of this article is overly long. Please help integrate some parts of it in sections. For helpful hints see WP:LEAD. With proper scructuring the article can become class start. Hoverfish Talk 08:14, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

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