NYT Quote Fabrication

Palmer Luckey shares a story about his frustrating experience with the New York Times publishing a fabricated quote.

"The New York Times posted a quote from me that I literally never said. I told them 'Hey, you said that I said this - I never said that.' They responded 'Well, it's more or less what you said, we don't think the meaning is different.'

I explained to them that I was taught the New York Times style guide in journalism school, and it doesn't say you get to quote and paraphrase me just because you think it doesn't mean anything different. I told them their quote was literally missing 6 of the words that I said, but they had it in quotes with a period. I never said that, and it was actually part of a longer run-on argument I was making that didn't even have a period.

They just said 'We don't think it really changes the meaning.' Without belaboring the point, you can't trust the media to do the right thing, and if you do, you're probably going to get burned. It worked for me for a while until it didn't."