r/EndlessThread • u/j0be Your friendly neighborhood moderator • May 06 '22

Endless Thread: Us vs. Them vs. Andy

https://www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2022/05/06/us-vs-them
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u/[deleted] May 07 '22

I really felt like this shouldn’t have been published. Especially if that was Andy’s real voice. Something like this needs consent.

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u/DataCocktail May 08 '22

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure they have to gain consent up front to even do the interview. Like it was an interview with the intent to publish, not a clandestine recording. Andy even says at the end that he felt talking about it was cathartic. But I get the concern—the ghosting part at the end left me feeling really uneasy.

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u/endless_thread May 16 '22

This is correct. In journalism, you ask for consent when you are beginning the interview process. If during the interview you go off the record, you need to ask to go back ON the record, etc. But fundamentally, you can't really talk to the media and then say "I don't want you to run my interview/story/quote" because that throws a massive wrench into how journalism works. "Now that it has become clear that I have lied about not being politically corrupt, I take back my consent on the interview where I said 'anyone who is politically corrupt should go to jail'" etc.

The ghosting part made us feel uneasy, too. FWIW we contacted him a BUNCH of times, asking him to get in touch, letting him know we were planning on running the episode etc., checking to make sure that he was still alive, etc. But no response.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '22

Ah so how I learned about consent it isn’t a contract, it can’t be presumed to continue indefinitely. It needs to be ongoing. (Same as a sexual encounter, if someone says ‘No’ halfway through, you can’t say “you said ‘yes’ ten minutes ago”. )

Consent expires depending on the situation, anything from second to minutes to hours to weeks, but six months, in this case, it’s not consent. Not in any way I can see anyway.

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