On Fri, Apr 04, 2003 at 01:03:55AM -0600, Shalanna wrote:
>  >Shalanna wrote:
>  >From the Washington Post chat with Stouffer, archived on their site:
> [all this stuff about how the poor nancy was wronged deleted]
> 
> Pamela explained:
>  >http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/2002_09.html
>  >Stouffer faked her evidence.  Her books do not predate Rowling's.
> 
> !!!!!!!!!    ????????   (I've been righteously indignant all this time, and 
> was *wrong*?)

Don't you just hate that?

I am quite sure that the original newspaper articles were intended
to get that reaction.

> But the Washington Post bought her entire line of 
> argument?!?!    Or at least they *seemed* to in the
articles I have 
> (from 2001, when another list bounced them around.)

Well, they didn't have the evidence of the second trial because there hadn't
been one yet.  I suppose they were slanting the story to sell papers.
Or maybe not.  The bare facts were that someone claiming to have
written works that predated Rowlings had sued her and lost and was
being countersued.  I don't know how much information the paper had
access to.  My tendency is to suspect that they slanted the story
to make it more productive of indignation, but I really don't know.

> I knew I couldn't trust the press.  But someone had sent me all that 
> information earlier, and I'd gotten really upbacked about it and had it 
> stored on my disk.

I bet they didn't make it clear that the whole thing wasn't over.

Just like those stories that whinge on and on about huge jury
awards to people who've been injured; you never hear that the
judge reduced the award or it was reduced on appeal.  Those
stories make the rounds for years, and the vast majority of
the reported payments are just nonsense, never happened.

> Public retraction and apology:  I really got it wrong that time.  Teresa 
> would naturally have it right, since that's her business.  Though I never 
> seem to have run across the explanation before.  I mean, wow.  What I can't 
> believe is that the Post (even on another Google search) didn't ever write 
> a follow-up that explained this.

That's a really, really bad habit of newspapers, and has been for
a long time.

>   *If* that had really happened the way she
said . . . 
> it wouldn't have been very fair at all.  And I think that's still my position.

She wouldn't have lost, either.  I mean, look, she got to take
Rowling to court and stress her out and drive her nuts and waste
her time and money.  For a fraud.  She got heard.  If what she
claimed had been true, Rowling would have had to deal with it.

-- 

Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet           (pddb{at}demesne.com)
"I will open my heart to a blank page
   and interview the witnesses."  John M. Ford, "Shared World"

--- Rachel's Little NET2FIDO Gate v 0.9.9.8 Alpha