Comments on: A Convenient Smoke Screen

By: anon

anon — Sun, 26 Dec 2004 22:41:44 +0000

actually journalist now have to reveal sources or face jail time. Legget is just one case of that. i found irony that one week i searched for information on an herb. i was going to use it as a murder method for a mystery i was plotting. the next week the news reports that senators got this specific toxin via the post. needless to say i dropped that plot idea quickly. so yes i do believe writers are being monitored even more so than is known. just my two cents, take it or leave it.

By: Sheryl Nantus

Sheryl Nantus — Mon, 22 Nov 2004 16:21:11 +0000

it’s still a sad, sad thing to have happen – if there ARE legitimate grievances in the future, people will be eyeing them with a jaded view thanks to this silly woman (the author, not the reporter) screeching at the top of her lungs in hopes of getting some sort of mass demonstration setting her free.

as for the “reporter” – can’t say much, other than her reputation has suffered one heck of a lot – along with the RWA in general and their newsletter specifically – I’d be seeing heads roll if I were in that organization, fer sure.

as usual, jmo – ymmv.

By: Brenda Coulter

Brenda Coulter — Sun, 21 Nov 2004 16:40:09 +0000

Give me a break, Larry. 😉 I meant only to illustrate that if an individual is desperate to retain her anonymity, it’s possible for a responsible journalist to sort out the facts while protecting his source. Sheesh.

By: LarryE

LarryE — Sun, 21 Nov 2004 11:18:11 +0000

The story may well turn out in the end to have been false, but I have to say the comparison to Deep Throat is overheated.

Deep Throat was a cultivated source within the Executive Branch for an established reporter on a major national newspaper, not an unknown romance writer coming out of the woodwork with a tale of woe.

By: booksquare

booksquare — Sat, 20 Nov 2004 20:12:12 +0000

Okay, yes, I was looking at this too narrowly. I missed the point Sheryl made — thanks, Brenda for hitting me over the head!

By: Brenda Coulter

Brenda Coulter — Sat, 20 Nov 2004 18:55:28 +0000

The lack of media coverage was precisely why I never believed the story. If such an event actually occurred and the victim wanted to warn fellow writers that similar injustices could be perpetrated on them, the RWR was not the place to do that. The RWR has an impressive circulation within the romance/women’s fiction community, but apart from that, who reads our journal? Why didn’t “Dilyn” attempt to warn male writers, mystery writers, and others?

And before anyone jumps on me and insists that Dilyn might have been afraid to approach any big media outlet, let’s think back a few decades. “Deep Throat” managed to remain anonymous while telling tales that Woodward and Bernstein and their editor were actually able to confirm. THAT was journalism. What was printed in the RWR was an incendiary, uncorroborated tale that we were expected to take on faith just because another romance writer told us to. The story had no place in Stephanie Bond’s “Jungle Beat” column, which, except for this lapse, has been an excellent source of romance industry scuttlebutt.

If “Dilyn” turns out to be a liar, there could still be some troubling germs of truth in the story she told to Stephanie Bond. But although I’m not in love with the USA PATRIOT Act, before I will believe a wild tale like Dilyn’s, I’m going to have to read about it somewhere besides the Romance Writer’s Report.

By: booksquare

booksquare — Sat, 20 Nov 2004 02:03:55 +0000

I suspect the lack of media coverage came more from the fact that the story was published in a trade journal — what coverage I did see was mainly reprinting the article.

I do hope you’re wrong on one point. I like to think that, even if we’re more skeptical about the issue, we aren’t desensitized. As citizens, we have a responsibility to speak out against injustice.

By: Sheryl Nantus

Sheryl Nantus — Fri, 19 Nov 2004 19:52:42 +0000

at the time that this story came out I was skeptical because of the lack of foreign coverage – heck, CBC/BBC/Al-Jazeera would have loved to have this story up – and now it seems that it was mostly smoke and mirrors.

sad thing is that if there IS a trangressions as major as she alleged, it’ll probably get lost in the shuffle since she cried Wolf on this one.

frankly, I hope they toss the book at her. Too many people were taken in by this and it caused a lot of pain on every side of the discussion.

Thank you for posting this – kudos to your researcher and much, much chocolate!