Jon Stettin
Mark Twain is often credited with saying, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” Whether he actually said it is still debated.
There is a cheap trick in journalism that doesn’t require a reporter to fabricate a single word you said. It’s subtler than that, and far harder for readers to catch. You take an unattributed sentence, the writer’s own framing or editorial characterization, and place it immediately before a real quote. No transition. No attribution. Just proximity. The reader’s mind does the rest, because human beings naturally read adjacency as agreement.
I know because it recently happened to me.
I’m not going to name the publication or the writer. That’s not the point of this piece, and naming names would turn a lesson into a grudge match. What matters is the mechanism, because if it happened to me, it has almost certainly happened to countless others who never had the opportunity to explain what actually occurred.
Here’s how it works.
A source, in this case me, gives a reporter an honest, specific, even affectionate description of something. In my case, it was Aqueduct Racetrack, a place that shaped more than fifty years of my life in horse racing. I described it as the hardcore horseplayer’s track. Cigars. Racing Forms rolled up in back pockets. Serious gamblers who lived and breathed the game. That’s not an insult. That’s a love letter with dirt under its fingernails.
What appeared in print was something different.
The writer’s own description of Aqueduct as a “loser’s track,” “grimy,” “poorly lit,” and “devoid of affectation” appeared immediately before my quote, without any attribution separating the two. To a reader moving through the paragraph, it naturally reads as one continuous thought. It creates the impression that I was reinforcing that description. I wasn’t. I never described Aqueduct that way, and anyone who knows me knows I never would. I grew up there. It was like a second home. I was describing the culture of the people who made Aqueduct unique, not diminishing a place that means so much to me.
Before publication, a fact-checker contacted me, identified himself, asked thoughtful questions, and I confirmed exactly what I meant. Very little of that context appeared in the finished story. The fact-checking process existed. It simply didn’t preserve the meaning of what I was trying to communicate.
That should concern anyone who ever speaks with the media. Fact-checking confirms that your words are accurate. It does not necessarily protect the context surrounding those words. It does not guarantee that the sentence immediately before your quote wasn’t written in a way that changes how readers naturally interpret what follows. You can be quoted with complete accuracy and still leave readers believing you endorsed a conclusion you never reached because the framing around your quote did the work for you.
This isn’t an argument against talking to reporters. That is a personal choice. Choose wisely. Most journalists work hard, ask honest questions, and genuinely want to get the story right. Access matters, and good journalism matters. The lesson is simply this: understand that accuracy and context are not always the same thing.
Read the finished piece with the same scrutiny you’d apply to a claiming race full of first-time starters. Ask who wrote the sentence before yours. Ask whether your quote is making your own point, or quietly advancing someone else’s. And if it doesn’t fairly reflect what you meant, correct the record promptly, calmly, and in writing. I still believe in answering questions honestly. I just no longer believe honesty alone protects context.
Sometimes the words aren’t the trick. The space between them is.
Lesson learned.
Related Coverage:
The Big A: A Lifetime of Memories From Aqueduct – Farewell to the Big A: The Life and Legacy of Aqueduct Racetrack – Manny Franco, Linda Rice leading jockey and trainer at Aqueduct spring meet
