Primary sources
This Eureka Women’s March story is starting to piss me off, because it’s broken out of the far-right enclave now but I still can’t find a primary source – neither the Facebook group nor the putative press release.
The Washington Post for instance – it just repeats the reporting without linking to the sources it cites.
Organizers of the 2019 Eureka Women’s March, originally scheduled for Jan. 19, said in a statement that the decision came after numerous conversations with leading local activists and supporters of the march.
“Up to this point, the participants have been overwhelmingly white, lacking representation from several perspectives in our community,” the Facebook statement read. “Instead of pushing forward with crucial voices absent, the organizing team will take time for more outreach.”
Did it? Did the Facebook statement read that way? Where is it? Why not link to it?
This seems like pretty crappy journalistic practice.
While many of the Facebook group’s members applauded the organizers’ efforts to diversify the rally, others expressed dissatisfaction with the decision.
“Local Organizers have let themselves be duped, What kind of crowd do they expect when you have 77.86% of the population being White?” group member Terri Selfridge commented on the post that announced the cancellation of the march. “Organizers PLEASE RECONSIDER!!!”
It’s annoying.
Monday: Updating to add: I did find the Facebook group later in the day.
I’ve had complaints about that for years. Once in a newsletter I used to write for, one of the writers wrote a piece that I thought was rather…suspicious…but he claimed he had found it in more than one source, so he went ahead and wrote it. When I clicked through to his sources, the second source cited the first source, so it wasn’t really two different sources, it was one source picking up the other source.
People don’t seem to understand what sources are these days, or how to use them. I am horrified at how many books/articles I read that cite only secondary sources for scientific or historical works.
Definitely looking like it might be something made up by Russian trolls
It may be that there is a Facebook group and I just haven’t been able to find it; Google doesn’t search FB so it can be tricky. On the other hand it also may be that there is a Facebook group and it’s the creation of Russian trolls.
I’d really expect the Washington Post to do better than this! *fume*
This is the only related Facebook page that I could find; even here, I can only find the alleged cancellation from the organisers being quoted, not the original.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/142918803064495/
The whole diversity thing in the mostly white community; the pre-emptive bullshit… I’m beginning to think Acolyte of Satan is right. They can’t find any lady penises in Eureka. so they’re delaying the march.
I agree, it’s incredibly annoying.
Here is the statement on Facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/142918803064495/permalink/271561183533589/
Thanks tiggerthewing and Barry Deutsch – I should have updated the post: I found the Facebook group later.
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2018/the-organizing-team-will-take-time-for-more-outreach/
A few years ago the BBC announced with much ceremony that from then on they’d always include a proper citation to the academic paper if such a thing existed. They wouldn’t just copy the blurb out of the press release or uncritically quote another news source.
They very very clearly did not do this. It drives me crazy. I’ve been forced to write press releases about my work from time to time. They are always completely mangled by the press office which knows what it wants the article to be about and always finds a way to make it about that, regardless of what the work is actually saying. That’s one of the reasons why there are so many articles that completely misrepresent science (and, I’m sure, the humanities).
Fine, be lazy. But surely you don’t have to be so lazy that you can’t even copy and paste the url for the paper WHICH WILL BE ON THE PRESS RELEASE.