UPDATE: How NOT To Demonstrate Accountability

Original Story July 16, 2012 8:52pm EDT:

Over on BleedingCool, a freelancer made a pretty big mistake covering the Firefly 10th Anniversary Reunion Press Conference.

Kate Kotler reported that Joss Whedon made a serious statement about continuing the franchise by doing a reboot.

I have been unable to find a single soul other than Ms. Kotler who thought this was the case. Her own editor, Brendon Connelly, originally ran it correctly as an article stating that Whedon had a snarky/sarcastic response about doing it. But she pushed on (allegedly with the support of Rich Johnston) to report her version.

That version stood up as an article for three days, as Brendon allowed her the opportunity to back it up.

During this time, she claimed she was in active communication with Debbie Myers (of The Science Channel) in her attempts to confirm it. The three days ended with the indication being that she was not once in touch with her beyond being directed to schedule an appointment with her assistance as the press conference broke up.

She blamed her equipment, saying her recorder broke down, when video and audio of the whole thing was available online within nine (9) hours of her article posting. She had over two (2) full days to see that how she recalled events happening (she says her notes eventually didn't fit what was recorded as happening, demonstrating sloppiness) was incorrect.

In the end, when she finally admitted her mistake 72 hours later, she said the following:

I strongly believe that the mark of character is the ability for an individual to stand up and honestly admit when they are wrong and have made a mistake. That is what I am here to do today.

I thought that took the cake. But then I saw the following exchange on Twitter:








Seriously? She objects (and continues to object when people call her on it) to having her own Twitter account tagged to her work, wanting the heat for her mistake (and that was hardly heat there) to go to the BleedingCool account, instead.

"I understand you're mad about the article, but could you make sure to blame the people I wrote the inaccurate article for instead? Kthnx!"

That about sums up the whole crazy ride.

UPDATE July 17, 2012 9:28pm EDT: Oh Lord, she gets even more ridiculous.

I feel a little like that there are a lot of people who were just waiting to take shots at me, when/if I was caught in a situation where I fucked up.

Being spectacularly wrong and refusing to acknowledge it for three days happened because people were rooting for it and waiting for it. She's running from the "innerwebs" to avoid seeing people take shots at her for her mistake, which is probably about the only reasonable response I've seen from her. Of course, until she actually takes an honest and sincere bit of responsibility for her error, I'd rather she have to take her lumps, but avoiding her "bad press" is generally a health approach.