response 1 of 11:

Jun 28 16:03 UTC 1994

(no.)

(I think that such a tactic would be going out of my way as a journalist
to make an article interesting. It would also mean attacking a subject
subjectively instead of objectively. If I really thought the person in
question would ever cause harm to the public, I could find another way to
put him out of commission.)

(Also, if it ever got around that I had taken his words out of context, I
believe that I would find it extremely difficult to find future
interviews, and my career as a journalist would be shot.)

response 3 of 11:

Jun 29 06:33 UTC 1994

        As a journalist covering the Ann Arbor school board for The
Communicator, the Community High paper, I have been in this situation many
times, and the answer is *always* no.  Believe me, I've been tempted, as
there were six members of last year's board who I did not agree with in
the least.  But in those situations I just had to swallow my excitement
about having gotten the quote and accept that there wasn't a story there. 
Chances were that there would be a big story the next week, and I would
just have to wait for that.  Writing a false and damaging story would not
help anything.  It would probably be noticed and exposed, and the best I
would be able to hope for would be that people would forget about it. 
More likely, the concequences would be far worse.  When that really big
story came the next week, where there would be real stuff that could be
very damaging to a few of the board members, people would say "that's just
another one of Steve Gibbard's liberal propeganda articles," and would not
take it seriously.  It might even help the people I would be trying to
look bad by making them look like victims. 
        In my effort to remain unbiased, I should note that this is my
opinion of how I handled stuff.  Some of the people I covered disagreed,
not liking to be made to look bad for things they had actually done.  One
now former board member, who shall remain anonymous here, actually walked
up to me at a board meeting a few weeks before the election and started
yelling at me about not checking my facts in a story I had written several
weeks before (in that story I had dared to print the reaction of a person
he had made some accusations against, along with his accusations).  I
think the point in the conversation that most showed his reason for being
mad at me was when he said, "you've attacked me on every issue, and I'm
getting tired of it." He then threatened to sue me and said he would shut
down my paper if he had the power to.  What did I do there?  I picked up
my pen and notebook and wrote down what he was saying.  We printed that in
the next week's paper, along with comments from our newspaper advisor
about this board member's previous interactions with the paper, and from
the teachers' union and paraprofessionals' union presidents, both of whom
had heard the conversation and had called me out into the hall to tell me
how horrified they were to hear what this board member had just said to me.

response 5 of 11:

Jul 3 15:26 UTC 1994

It would depend entirely on what paper I worked for.  New York Times, No way!
National Enquirer?  Heck yes!

response 7 of 11:

Jul 13 16:29 UTC 1994

Re #5: I would starve before being a reporter for the Enquirer.

response 9 of 11:

Dec 27 23:00 UTC 1995

I am glad I am not a journalist. I dont like having that kind of power over the
fate of other people. I would give the man the benefit of the doubt and omit
the material in favor of something that did not cause question in my mind

response 11 of 11:

Nov 18 14:13 UTC 1997

I would write the article. In it I would mention that this tape was on the
web and where you could find it...let the people hear it for themselves. I
would also send copies of the tape to the local radio and television, my
attorney and my good friend Jimmy in Airizona who loves stuff like this.