Wetmore quote for tomorrows CU race

He could have been misquoted you know. That does happen quite a bit.

That's a huge problem with reporters. They don't check the facts before they write a story.

I doubt misquoting was the problem. Sandrock is one of the best running journalists we have. I doubt he failed to do research. Failure to do research wouldn't result in a definitel number of races, unless Wetmore said it, was mistaken, and Sandrock didn't check.

if sandrock applies the same standard to newspaper articles as his recent book, i would doubt the accuracy of any quotes.

his book is riddled with errors...

Maybe Wetmore just made a mental mistake. What's the big deal?

How dare you questoin the leader?

De night time is de right time.

Sandrock writes what is told to him. If the info was wrong

it's not his responsibility.....it was a "quote"!!!!

Wetmore read a post on letsrun.com and thought it was true. Happens all the time, you know.

Actually, you are wrong. A reporter is responsible for everything he writes. If he chooses not to double check a (in this case, arguably trivial point), he then shares in the responsibility for the inaccuracy because, even though the quote was given to him, he is providing the venue for its public viewing.

This is called good journalistic ethics. And as I said, nine times out of ten, small mistakes are no big deal and not worth doing deep research to check accuracy.

Now, had Wetmore said something like "Western State is so good only because they have all foreigners in their top ten year after year," then the caution lights would start to flash and it would be look-it-uo time.

I disagree. How often does a person make a quote and

a journalist decides that he knows what "really" was meant and changes the info and in turn

misrepresents who said the quote in the first place.

I think it would be good ethics to quote it as said even if the info was wrong.

tax wrote:

I think it would be good ethics to quote it as said even if the info was wrong.

I's a judgement call. If something doesn't ring correct, you have to decide whether to use it or simply omit that part of the quote. You NEVER print a known inaccuracy that is not a quote (I think everybody knows that). You can indeed print an inaccurate quote (God help you if you don't have the person saying it on tape!), but good ethics then demand you state that it was inaccurate, the quote-giver mistaken, and what the truth is on the subject according to your further research. Ideally, you print the quote and a second one to correct it.

Example:

(condensed CU coach's quote)"---run six races, while we are running our first."

However, a quick check with Coach _______ of Western State revealed that not all varsity members have participated in these early seasons races.

"The Shootout will be the first time our top seven have all been in the same race this season," corrected (Western coach)________, "It will be interesting to see how they stack up together."

You get the drift.

Your're right.....it obvious you are a journalist and know this turf better that I do. best wishes

Due to an obvious bias, you read way too much into Wetmore's remarks. Do you think he follows the Western State squad enough to know who is "there (sic) top 7" and how many times they've shown up in the results so far this season? He just knows that WSC has entered teams in several more meets than CU has. Wetmore doesn't even pay close enough attention to WSC (and why would he?) to know just how many races they've sent representatives to so far, why would he care who their top 7 are and how much they've raced so far?