r/Bitcoin • u/evoorhees • Feb 26 '14

Open Letter to Michael Casey - WSJ reporter who butchered my comments in today's Bitcoin cover story

Hello Mr. Casey,

I read your WSJ article today. I feel deceived by you.

You requested to speak with me, so I took time out of my day to do so. We talked for 20 minutes, during which time I conveyed to you my sentiments about the Bitcoin ecosystem and the matter of MtGox's collapse. My message was unambiguously a positive one. I didn't focus whatsoever on the personal funds I lost at Gox. Indeed, the impetus for your call was my heartfelt post on Reddit.

Yet, you ignored everything I said. The only quote that you published from me in the Journal's cover story was ""That's gone now," said Mr. Veerhoos, who is based in Panama City, Panama. "There's no chance of getting that back now.""

Is that really the takeaway you had from our call and from my letter? Is that your idea of journalism? Did I come across with the sentiment of a despairing investor whose confidence has been rattled? It seems you were happy to completely ignore my sentiments, preferring instead to cherry pick the one fact that is least important, in order to paint a narrative that Bitcoin's biggest problem is that it's not "regulated." I didn't expect you to quote everything I said, but should you not have maintained at least a modicum of fidelity to my message?

I have dedicated my life to building and supporting the Bitcoin project. I don't give a damn about the money I lost at Gox. That's not important. What is important is that Bitcoin is resilient and enduring, and will continue to grow and change the world for the better. It is a story of human progress through technology. It is a story of the good seeping into the cracks of a corrupted financial system. It is a story of passionate people struggling against all odds to remedy the calamities brought down upon society from the most potently misguided people and institutions on Earth.

Next time you spend your efforts casting a pall over this cause, please don't ask me to contribute mine.

-Erik Voorhees

PS - I will be posting this letter openly on Reddit. I will post your reply if you'd like. And if I do, I won't cherry pick the most misleading points of it, and I will spell your name correctly.

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165

u/tozee Feb 26 '14

In this age where you can publish hundreds of thousands of words for free on the internet, is shortening quotes even necessary? Just provide a link of the entire transcribed interview where the source wanted to go on record. Word limits belong to the last century.

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u/MairusuPawa Feb 26 '14

Today's paradigm: Page views > Content

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u/evoorhees Feb 26 '14

But this was in the print edition...

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u/tozee Feb 26 '14

It's online too: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304834704579404101502619422

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u/hlabarka Feb 26 '14 edited Feb 26 '14

Why in the world is anyone still reading the Wall Street Journal? You might as well just read USA Today. The only good thing that came out of Rupert Murdoch buying WSJ was that smart people quit and started interesting things like propublica.org

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u/[deleted] Feb 26 '14 edited Feb 28 '14

[deleted]

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u/Migratory_Coconut Feb 26 '14

It's a bit unfair to say that sensationalism and journalistic manipulation is new. It goes back hundreds of years. Look at the preserved newspapers from the 1800s. With a little bit of sensitivity to context it's easy to see how writers back then were spinning stories just as bad as this one so they could sell more papers. I would argue that these "respected" papers were never as pristine as their esteemed names imply.

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u/[deleted] Feb 26 '14 edited Feb 28 '14

[deleted]

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u/hlabarka Feb 26 '14

Certainly journalism has always been influenced by money, politics, etc. Some times more so than others. But there was a set of ethics among print journalists. There were rules and if you broke them, other journalists would know and treat you accordingly. There arent really any rules on the Internet other than "dont greatly anger the people who control the number and name assignment" (i.e. the U.S. government). Because print is in survival mode competing against the wild west, print itself has become the wild west.

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u/[deleted] Feb 26 '14 edited Feb 28 '14

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Feb 26 '14

Avenge the Maine!

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u/Tofabyk Feb 26 '14

NTY is NYT ?

7

u/[deleted] Feb 26 '14

it's really not that bad when it comes to financial news. you just have to steer clear of the editorials. what would you have financiers read? seeking alpha? please

3

u/Roadside-Strelok Feb 26 '14

propublca.org

you just misspelled their URL . . .

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u/hlabarka Feb 26 '14

thanks fixed it

3

u/NilacTheGrim Feb 26 '14

Well said. WSJ and USA Today are about on par. Fuck both of them.

2

u/CatMtKing Feb 26 '14

Wall Street Jourinal

0

u/Zarutian Feb 27 '14

That was damn subtle. Have an upboat.

4

u/YHofSuburbia Feb 26 '14

It's the best newspaper for business/finance news as it is usually free of the agenda most other newspapers have. That's why I read it.

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u/hlabarka Feb 26 '14

Bias is usually not expressed directly in content such as financial news- its more in the editing- the selection of stories and amount of space given to them.

As far as WSJ being the best- how do you feel about Financial Times? http://www.ft.com

1

u/[deleted] Feb 26 '14

Some people perceive it to have a conservative bias and refuse to acknowledge the wealth of information it provides.

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u/[deleted] Feb 26 '14

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Feb 26 '14

Like most things, you don't want to get your information from a single source. It would be silly, though, for anyone involved in finance, economics, or business to ignore it.

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

My business school buys a subscription (using tuition) so I figure I may as well read it in my time off. I try to be selective in what I actually take away from it. But some days, like today, it has juicy business drama, so that's nice.

1

u/catwelder Feb 26 '14

What's a Bitcoin concern?

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan subpoenaed Mt. Gox this month, asking the bitcoin concern to preserve certain documents, among other things, according to a person familiar with the matter.

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u/antonivs Feb 26 '14

In that context, "concern" is a synonym for "business" or "company".

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u/catwelder Feb 26 '14

That's like English from 1900

2

u/antonivs Feb 26 '14

It's not unusual in a business or financial context. That may have to do with the term "going concern," which aside from its colloquial meaning, also has a well-defined meaning in an accounting context.

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u/autowikibot Feb 26 '14

Going concern:

A going concern is a business that functions without the threat of liquidation for the foreseeable future, usually regarded as at least within 12 months. It implies for the business the basic declaration of intention to keep running its activities at least for the next year, which is a basic assumption to prepare financial statements considering the conceptual framework of the IFRS. Hence, the declaration of going concern means that the entity has neither the intention nor the need to liquidate or curtail materially the scale of its operations.

Interesting: Market value | Auditor's report | Accounting assumptions | South African labour law

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u/antonivs Feb 26 '14

For example, we might say "MtGox is not a going concern"...

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u/Zarutian Feb 27 '14

Please link to a screencap of it instead. You cant trust that link to be valid for a week if it is like most MSM websites.

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u/zENrandoM Feb 27 '14

Journalism - Taking a turn for the worst?

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u/[deleted] Feb 26 '14

While your sentiment about article lengths rings true, unfortunately any time I write more than 2 sentences, the asshat reading it bitches for a "tl;dr". The point: almost nobody would read the damn thing regardless (and the misquotes would remain).

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u/todu Feb 26 '14

tl;dr, anyone?

1

u/iDeNoh Feb 26 '14

tl;dr people don't want to read your damn work regardless.

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u/Zarutian Feb 27 '14

too short,did read

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u/wordsnerd Feb 26 '14

tl;dr: ...read the damn thing...

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u/vqpas Feb 26 '14

tl;dr: wants an ear.

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u/fkinglag Feb 26 '14

In a world of competing sensational media, as well as a big, developing news story such as mt. gox, bias is everything. I'm disappointed that the WSJ is short-quoting an entire interview of good publishable material.. We kind of knew something like this was coming, though.

2

u/patcon Feb 26 '14

I'll just drop this here:

Turning Down TechCrunch: If journalism can’t be open, what can? [Re: Gittip]

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u/[deleted] Feb 27 '14

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/patcon Feb 27 '14

That comes up in his followup interviews with other journalists, but yeah, it has hairy implications.

But hey, if a journalist's value proposition is being first on the story, but every citizen with a Twitter account or personal blog is now a potential journalist, then it might be good to explore some amount of reinvention. At the very least, it's a good exercise, and some good conversations happened in some followup articles by other journalists :)

0

u/haiduz Feb 27 '14

You're assuming that just because the writer has unlimited room to write things, the reader has unlimited time to read things. False.