Reply #4: Regarding Scoop's "tabloidisation" of the original story...

[althecat]

I think I should make a few remarks in Scoops defence. This is the offending story described in the feature as Tabloidising the story.

Sludge Report #154 – Bigger Than Watergate!

And yes it does play the story up as much as it could. The purpose of this was twofold.

1. The story was intended as a scene setter. To place Bev's analysis of the insides of the voting programme in a broad political context and to show how serious a context that was.

2. We had to get as much exposure as possible in as short a time as possible to the link to the FTP site. We wanted someone like JHU to do what they did. But how to do so? We needed a big splash. The internet was the only medium we had as nobody else would touch the story. Hyperbole as many here in DU well understand plays very well online and so the story included a bit of that.

And it worked... while nearly everybody thought the headline was OTT, they kept mentioning it and that was good. And along with Bev's more serious analysis it got blogged like crazy, which was what we wanted.

For the record the headline was my choice not Bev's and she said so at the time. But I am not going to shy away from it now. And if we do find evidence in GA of tampering then it is probably true. Plus it always pays to aim high....

Al