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I'm just saying this generally, not really weighing in on this case, but:

If you've ever been the subject of an interview or two, there's a decent chance you've had the common experience of not being presented as you expected. Experienced folks know how to basically tell journalists what words to write because journalists otherwise put all sorts of strange things and misinterpretations in.

You certainly can't put the style and overall presentation of the article on her in this case. Being interviewed doesn't mean you chose to present yourself the way the journalist ends up doing.




Why else would they interview her?


I'm not saying there's any malice here!

The interviewer and interviewee have the same core understanding: describe stuff about the person relevant to the human-interest angle about the interviewee.

What happens is as an interviewee is that you sit down with an interviewer and talk to them like you would meeting anyone, tell them about yourself and how you came to be involved in whatever the interesting thing that led to the interview. Then, you read the article in surprise about how they put some weird spin on a random little side-note or anecdote or made a connection between two things you said that aren't really connected. And it becomes obvious that they did those things because they actually don't know you at all and are grasping at telling an in-depth story about someone they just met and knew nothing about really.

Go ask anyone who's been interviewed this way. You'll find it common that the published article presented things in ways the interviewee thinks are weird, inaccurate, just confused or out of proportion.

The only real point is: don't assume the interviewee has any responsibility or desire for promoting themselves in the style of the article. That's not likely the case, even if it happens sometimes.




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