On Tue, 04 Apr 2000 21:16:55 PDT, Ehud Gavron said:
Your list of people below are already emailing me to say "no no, we just gave him info"
You're not journalist.
(I'm assuming here that Gordon starts off with "Hi, I'm Gordon Cook, with the Cook Report", and not social-engineering with false names etc ;) Umm.. given the list of names for 1998 through 2000, and the fact that I *know* that at least some of them were aware of what Gordon writes when they gave him info, I think it's safe to conclude that at least a good fraction of Gordon's listed sources were giving him information fully aware of where it was going to end up. If you tell somebody info knowing it's going into a well-publicized newsletter, you're talking to a journalist. It may not be Tom Brokaw, but it's a journalist. ;) I have to admit, the last time I dealt with a news agency, nobody bothered asking for credentials. Had something to do with the fact that they pulled up in a van that had 'News 7' on the side, started off with "Hi, I'm from News 7, here to talk to the director about the recent FCC bandwidth auction", and they had video cameras and employee badges and everything to match. So.. *should* I have asked for more ID before I pointed them at the right office? And more importantly, how is said ID implemented on the Internet? I don't think they tattoo 'Journalist' on your head when you get licenced, and I'd not trust a JPEG of a picture - it's too easy to fake with Photoshop. ;) Now let's face it guys: 1) Gordon's a journalist, or what passes for one 2) We're stuck with him Valdis Kletnieks Operating Systems Analyst Virginia Tech