Talk:Charles C. W. Cooke

Do the news citations "corroborate" Charles Cooke's article on Rebekah Jones?

I'm concerned that footnotes 44-46 don't "corroborate" the National Review article and only mentions them.

"In May of 2021, Cooke authored a piece debunking Covid fraud and political harassment claims[43] made by Rebekah Jones that was picked up widely and corroborated by outlets such as NPR,[44] Reason,[45] and Business Insider. The latter of which credited Cooke with extensive public record research into her background, questionable authority, and specious claims.[46]"

To be more specific, none of the cited articles (at least from my reading) independently corroborate the claims in the National Review article. Thus, I'd suggest at least striking the words "and corroborated." Further, the Business Insider article again just references Cooke's article, so to say "the latter of which credited Cooke with extensive public record research" seems to unduely lend authority or corroboration to Cooke's article.

It seems especially important for Wikipedia to be careful when it comes to attacks on someone's personal character (Rebekah Jones). It's obviously fine to mention Cooke's major articles, but I'm concerned about how it's being given undue credence. I'd probably want to remove the whole paragraph unless there's something more to be said other than that Cooke wrote this article?

JustDoubleChecking (talk) 17:25, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Hi JustDoubleChecking, I got your message, thanks. I fully share your concern that Wiki needs to be careful in an incident related to personal character. I'm not sure this quite fits that model though as nothing in the article specifically references her character. Only that a National Review article had debunked claims of fraud and political harassment. I'm not sure what, specifically, is character related in the quoted text.

I'm also not sure I would agree with your reading of the support articles. I think it might depend on what you are counting as an 'independent source.' Since all of these claims rely on public records, independently checking those sources would seem to meet the mark for me. Sometimes though, I know people mean that phrase to mean looking for a separate source entirely. I'm not sure that is possible here given the nature of the incidents (there aren't usually multiple sources for a warrant).

I read the NPR article as confirming his research on the nature of her firing, and her role at the job. The Reason article validated her data manipulation claims and characterization of the investigation as being incorrect. However, the Business Insider article is probably the strongest source independently verified her job description, data access rights, and linked to a verification that the claim she made about law enforcement pointing weapons at her children was incorrect.

I think you have a good point on the undue authority point though, I've struck that sentence.

Squatch347 (talk) 23:59, 22 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Squatch347, I appreciate your considered reply.

(This is actually my first time participating in Wikipedia! Please let me know if I'm out of line, but I'm going to push back some more now.)

I see your nuance on what constitutes as corroboration, and yes, it'd be too much to require these article verify private sources. But, I'm still not seeing these cites. Take the NPR article, I don't believe it confirms anything about the nature of her firing? The only descriptions it gives on her firing are what Rebekah Jones says about it herself. The NPR article was written back in January well before Charles Cooke's article in May, so it certainly didn't corroborate Charles Cooke's article, but just contained basic uncontroversial information about the statement of her arrest warrant.

Using the Business Insider article as a cite for corroboration makes the least sense to me because it constantly says things like "according to a column in the National Review," "the column ... accuses Jones," "The National Review column claims," "Cooke writes in the National Review," and so on. The Business Insider article simply stating what Charles Cooke wrote without any take on whether it is correct or not. I do not see how the Business Insider article independently verified any of those three things mentioned?

The Reason article is largely the same as the Business Insider article. (Granted, they do have one paragraph that repeats three hyperlinks to Jones' twitter and one to the AP, all from Cooke's article. That's hardly corroboration, and what matters is if they corroborate new things that are not general background that everyone agrees on. Aside from copying a couple hyperlinks from Cooke in that one paragraph, everything else is just quoting Cooke.)

Thanks for your time and consideration!

JustDoubleChecking (talk) 04:28, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Hi JustDoubleChecking, definitely not out of line, we are all editors looking to make it better, I appreciate your input. I think one other distinction needs to be drawn. I'm not implying that those articles corroborate all aspects of Cooke's article, you are correct that there is a good deal of "according to Cooke" in them as well. Would it help to modify the sentence to read "corroborate aspects..."? Squatch347 (talk) 13:50, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Squatch347. But sorry, I still don't agree that, for example, the Business Insider article corroborates any aspect of Cooke's article. It only ever references things from Cooke's article as things Cooke said. The NPR article was before Cooke's article and was just describing basic facts about the warrant, so it neither picked up nor actively corroborated anything in Cooke's article. The Reason article was much the same as the Busines Insider article--I don't think copying a couple twitter hyperlinks from Cooke's article constitutes corroboration.

I also worry that "corroborate aspects" could be used as an arbitrarily low bar that holds if there is any point of agreement between two articles. It therefore does not seem like a useful term?

I don't think I'll have anything more to add, so unless someone else shares my concerns in the future, I'll leave it up to you.

Best,

JustDoubleChecking (talk) 05:12, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

JustDoubleChecking, given one of the pillars of Wiki is consensus, I've removed corroborated from the current article. Squatch347 (talk) 11:42, 24 June 2021 (UTC)