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August 3, 2007
Sharon Waxman's selective fact(s)
Earlier this week I posted about how strange it was for NYT reporter and author Sharon Waxman to claim that Marion True "played by the rules." True didn't: She took unethical loans and the Getty accepted her resignation as a result. That's as not 'playing by the rules' as it gets. But Waxman writes:
[I]t is Green, in fact, who is factually inaccurate, as he cites the loan for her house on Paros as proof that she broke the rules. Her public ordeal - her criminal trial in Italy and the pending charges against her in Greece -- do not involve the loan for her house in Paros.
Of course, I never said that the loans were a part of the criminal trial. Waxman clings to a strange dichotomy: True may have broken the rules when it comes to the loans, but she is clean in so far as antiquities dealings go. Therefore True "played by the rules." Really? Then why did the Getty just return to Italy $23.2 million in antiquities that True was involved in bringing into the Getty's collection? (Plus another $1.6 million in antiquities that were donated to the Getty while True was the curator-of-record.)
Which brings me to Waxman's next bizarre point (or excuse, I suppose). She claims that she's only writing about True's "public ordeal." Well, if having your career-ending resignation reported prominently in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and in newspapers on at least two continents isn't a public ordeal, I don't know what is.
Posted August 3, 2007 7:20 PM
