> Why do you imply that the members of this panel are being disingenuous?
The original article claimed, "To balance things out, Farhad invited Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian, but he dropped out, so it was just the three of us." Saying that Alexis "dropped out" is simply wrong, so the statement is disingenuous at best, dishonest at worst.
Being disingenuous or dishonest would require knowledge on her part that she was misrepresenting. Given that the event description originally included Alexis, and the obvious chain of miscommunication above, is it not a reasonable assumption that Rebecca was simply misinformed?
This article was clearly written post-email exchange. At this point the author knows definitely that Alexis never planned on attending and that the idea that he would in the first place was simply a communications breakdown.
The author is now being deliberately disingenuous.
Perhaps. It seems strange that one would write an article without checking on this fact, and personally I don't believe I will frequent this person's writing again, but it is certainly far more forgivable than dishonesty.
"Hey Farhad, whatever happened to Alexis at the panel?"
"Oh, uh, it fell through."
"Oh, ok."
I can think of hundreds of other variations of the same exchange that don't include negligence on the author's part. This isn't a cross examination - which is the price we pay when we gleefully shoved a knife in the chest of real journalism and twisted it hard, and went and partied with blogs afterward.
Indeed, but this is also the reason why I mostly frequent technical blogs. I'm afraid I hold people who write about people to a higher standard. When you risk impugning someone's reputation you have a higher responsibility.
Except real journalism probably never would have covered such an insignificant event. Blogs have a lower barrier to entry, but they also have a lower barrier to entry, if you follow.
Farhad didn't know what happened. All he knew is that Ohanian was supposed to at least be asked, and he supposedly wasn't even corresponded with, which could, by all accounts, not even be true. He was on the invite list, and decided against. I'm not sure what part doesn't correlate with "dropped out."
How can you possibly "drop out" of a panel that you explicitly said you were never planning on attending?
Dropping out means that you were planning to go and then you had to cancel. Whether Farhad knew this before or not, Alexis's email was very clear and so there's no excuse to claim today that Alexis dropped out of anything.
The original article claimed, "To balance things out, Farhad invited Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian, but he dropped out, so it was just the three of us." Saying that Alexis "dropped out" is simply wrong, so the statement is disingenuous at best, dishonest at worst.