Private room with narrow view – Response: Daniel Fabiani
dfabiani on Jun 21st 2010
I have to say that I believe that the reporting done by the Times reporter was just too much. There is a fine line between facts and class, and this guy had no class to reveal the lifestyle of a 90-something year old jazz legend without even consulting the family! As a practicing reporter, I feel that I would never reveal things that would harm someone, unless they were secretively trying to harm others. That is the only reason to bring shame to a person, nothing else. I mean look at it this way, the family said that there was no reason for a reporter to be there without one of them, and there was thanks to the landlord. End of story, the reporter got his head stuck up his ass and thought he hit a goldmine with discovering hte humble living of the old jazz star. My god, how stupid could the reporter, or better yet, how low could he have been?
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5 Responses to “Private room with narrow view – Response: Daniel Fabiani”
Although I believe that it’s disgusting when people’s private lives are splashed on news pages, and I’m not saying I would have written what this reporter did, I don’t think it’s so crazy that he didn’t consult the family first. Reporters report news, not what people try to tell them is news. If you were writing about a company, you wouldn’t take everything they said about themselves at face value, you would do research, take what they say about themselves with a grain of salt, see another side. This reporter wasn’t reporting on how the family viewed this guy. And the fact that he was a jazz legend doesn’t make him immune to real reporting. It didn’t seem to me like the reporter was trying to trash him. Again, I’m not saying what he wrote was true or fair 100%, (I think a lot of news reports are not entirely accurate, balanced or fair) but I just don’t think what he wrote was so off the wall.
I agree with you about how disgusting it is to display private lives in the news, but you are wrong when it comes to “immunity” to real reporting. Let’s get real here, there has to be discretion used. Like I said, they wouldn’t have reported that if an advertising company decided to pull their funds from their company. Do you GET what I’m saying?
What he wrote was 100 percent unfair, making an old man look like he was a bum. He should be ashamed that reporter. How much could a 91 year old guy do form himself. Of course it would be a small space he lives in since he didn’t want help or anything. My god reporting is just so subjective this conversation could go on for ages. Or is it objective? hmmm???
And to add on to what Rappaport said, the reporter was offered a very exclusive way to write the story. So many of us would like to cut police tape; here, Kilgannon was allowed entrance into a legend’s home. What reporter in their right mind would refuse such a scenario? Of course the reporter should have contacted Jones’ family to comment on his passing, but I don’t think I would have called the family first to ask for permission to get into Jones’ apartment. No journalist craves obstacles to an article nor to a blog post. Perhaps too much blame is put on the reporter and not enough on the landlord…
This is true, but the landlord’s right is to have keys to all his tenant’s apartments. I don’t know what to say really, but this reporter was rude and the landlord was all too eager to get the old man’s stuff out and etc.
I must say that i think it’s almost impossible to never say anything to harm someone, there is no way to foresee that something you may write, even if it was completely accurate and true to the words, will not hurt someone somewhere. Although I do agree that we should never intentionally write something harmful, or untrue, but that would be slander.