MSNBC Reporter Emails and Makes Corrections

Earlier I wrote a post about being featured in an MSNBC article More Evangelicals say God is Green, about the environment of all things, unfairly.

Today I got an email from the reporter, Alex Johnson, sharing his thoughts …

Dear Mr. Thomas:

Sorry I didn’t realize sooner that there was a problem with how I quoted you in my story on green evangelicals. No one wrote in to me about it, so I didn’t know anything was afoot until I stumbled on a blog post.

I understand that you have no intrinsic reason to believe me, but please be assured this was not malicious. We work very fast on the Web, both in writing and editing.

I’ve added a notation to the story that you were speaking as a private citizen and restored the parenthetical note. I have no interest in misleading anybody.

Alex Johnson
MSNBC.com

I responded

Dear Alex,

Thank you very much for your email. I really appreciate you taking the time to correct the story. I am very pleased to see that you are a person of integrity. While environmentalism is not my issue, I have interviewed with a lot of media over time and understand the pressures you face.

Even so, I worry that the Main Stream Media (MSM) works too fast to ensure quality reporting. It also worries me that the MSM does not often cite blogs as the source of their quotes (which still hasn’t happened in my case.)

Regardless, I think it is terrific that you have emailed me back and made the changes.

I will create another blog post with your email below so that my readers will know the good developments and hopefully the other blogs that picked it up will also give updates on their blogs.

Thank you again.

Sincerely,
Randy Thomas

Click here to see the updated page that has the quote and proper context in it.

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