Thursday, April 7, 2011

Cut and Paste Journalism at the Huffington Post?

Archaeo-Blogger Paul Barford and friends are busily promoting Daniel Grant's advocacy piece on the Huffington Post as yet another "well written" expose of the antiquities trade, museums and the need for provenance research. See http://paul-barford.blogspot.com/2011/04/antiquities-only-area-of-art-world-that.html and http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-grant/antiquities-collecting-due-diligence_b_844838.html

The article features such luminaries from the archaeological world as Clemency Coggins, Ricardo Elia, and Professor Patty Gerstenblith.

Writers of such advocacy nonetheless often also contact representatives from the "other side"of an issue to give the piece "balance." And so Grant appears to have done based on the quotes from attorney Bill Pearlstein, who according to the article represents "the National Association of Dealers in Ancient and Oriental Art." There is, however, one problem. When I forwarded the article to Bill Pearlstein, he indicated he did not recall speaking to Grant. And, he has not represented the National Association of Dealers in Ancient, Oriental and Primitive Art for some five years. Is it possible that Grant used an old quote from somewhere else to provide perceived balance?

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