What we can learn from lawyer’s letter to Business Insider

Bill Grueskin, a longtime business journalist, writes for Columbia Journalism Review about what can be learned from the letter sent to Business Insider regarding its coverage of plagiarism allegations against Neri Oxman.

Grueskin writes:

Do give subjects of your complicated stories time to respond. 

After BI’s first Oxman story ran, the site quickly assembled another piece with more examples of duplicated copy. According to Clare Locke, BI reporter Long “sent Pershing Square’s head of communications a 7,071-word email that contained 28 new allegations of purported plagiarism and demanded comment ‘immediately.’” BI then published that story ninety-two minutes later, the firm says, adding that Long should’ve known “it would be impossible for Dr. Oxman to fact check her allegations in an hour and a half.”

Locke’s letter stated that when BI reached out for comment on its first story, an Ackman spokesperson responded “that Dr. Oxman would wait to publish her statement until after Business Insider published its article.” Even in that case, though, journalists need to give people adequate time to respond to complicated stories.

BI’s tight time frame indicated that its journalists were “not operating in good faith,” Elizabeth Locke said in a written response to my questions. “Therefore, my client elected to see what would be included in print rather than guessing and providing comment in a vacuum.”

Read more here.