Sure, treat these guys like SATTSO and the Arizona tourism people-- see how far it gets you.
I got multiple responses out of the AZ Tourism Board; they didn't refuse to talk to me. In the end, it was clear that they didn't have an answer, though their Web site purported to provide one. SATTSO made it clear to everyone paying attention to our discussion that he or she was, in fact, evading questions. Where else would you expect me to get with them? Legal advice from a board of tourism? Acknowledgement from an airport security guard that he's part of something horrible?
not everyone has patience for your antics, especially when you respond to / argue just about every little point in the email.
People who would prefer not to discuss some point should refrain from making it. Almost every point Steiger made in his response was either irrelevant or inaccurate. I could either let myself be walked over or refute those points.
You took an abrasive, argumentative approach in your email and I would not be surprised if they don't respond at all as a result of that.
The man told me repeatedly that he disagreed with me, then explained his disagreement with things I never wrote. Should I just ignore that? Would the truth be less abrasive if I sent some flowers along with the message?
You also have to understand that sometimes lawyers might know more than you;
Understood 100%. In fact, when it comes to the law, I'd say lawyers almost always know more than I do. You may have noticed that I asked what his lawyers had to say about the situation.
for example, their consul says that BP might have broken the law and you just argue with it.
He didn't write that. He wrote, "it's not at all clear to our counsel, on the facts we described, that BP did not violate the law." Okay, great. Let's unwind that mess. So they're not positive that BP was in compliance with the law. No kidding. Would they ever be?
Furthermore, he prefaced that statement with, "and contrary to your statement," but what he wrote was not at all contrary to my statement. He was arguing with me again about something I didn't write or even imply. I wrote, "BP staff may have acted inappropriately, but they have the right to do so. Mr. Engelberg did not describe any unlawful behavior on the part of BP staff." BP staff
do have the right to act inappropriately as long as they're not violating the law. Engelberg
did not, best I can tell, describe any unlawful behavior on the part of BP staff. Steiger didn't dispute either of those assertions. Instead he erected another straw man and tore it down. I'm not going to let that slide. If he misunderstood me, now he should understand me. If he was playing games, he lost that set.
When he wrote "[i]f the detention was undertaken at BP's behest, then this may have been a denial of the photographer's civil rights under color of law by BP" and you ask "[w]hat law do your counsel believe, on the facts you described, that the BP staff may have violated in this incident?."
Yes, I asked that. Do you think it's unlawful for someone to ask the police to do something? I doubt it. That's why I asked him to clarify. Does he think the BP staff lied to the police in order to achieve the action they desired? Does he think the police took direction directly from BP? Those are two very different scenarios, and there are surely other likely ones. Rather than guessing what he meant, I asked him to tell me. If I didn't care what he meant, I wouldn't have asked for clarification.
Their position is clear-- if the detention was puppetry, it was illegal.
If their position was, "if the detention was puppetry, then it was illegal," then the story should be that the police are taking direction from a private company, not "We have to protect the nation's refineries, but..." (I did choose not to address the fact that those are not
our refineries, but a private company's) and not "We're bothered that under our tight deadline, which the police were aware of, they didn't call our newsroom to ask about the guy they picked up."
And why would you argue legal points with a lawyer through his client anyway?
I don't believe I did.
You were also able to find occasion in your email to belittle the circulation of their publication:
I didn't belittle their publication's circulation. I corrected him. In response to my accusation of them letting the government agents' unconstitutional actions slide, he suggested I find solace in the fact that they brought it to my attention in the first place. He was wrong. They did not bring it to my attention. SDF_Traveler did. I admitted that ProPublica played a role, since SDF_Traveler sourced that information from them (as will anyone who reports it, since the story is about the guy ProPublica had out taking photographs) and thanked them for that.
Had they not published the article, I'm not sure what facts you would know, if any.
I can't argue with that. ProPublica (which, in this context, I'll use to include the free-lance photographer they used), BP, the police, and the guy who claimed to be from Homeland Security, were the only people who knew about it. The other parties were unlikely to report it. Had ProPublica not reported what happened to ProPublica, we probably would not have heard what happened to ProPublica.
If you wanted to reply to the email with questions, you could have done that, but you couldn't resist the temptation to argue. Grow up.
Ari, I sent the man some comments and questions about an article he published. He responded by arguing with me -- mostly about things I never wrote. Should I have brushed off half of what he wrote as if it was insignificant? That would be rather insulting. If he didn't intend to make the points he tried to make, he shouldn't have tried to make them. He's a journalist, so I think it's reasonable to take his words at face value, since he should know how to write well enough to avoid writing one thing when he means another. It isn't as if I'm bullying someone who's just not a skilled writer or is unfamiliar with the situation.
ProPublica purports to be part of the "new guard" of journalism. But their editor-in-chief's deferential attitude toward police and the federal government is just more of the same in a different medium. I refuse to mosey along and pretend otherwise.