AITAB for accusing someone of trying to buy an article in the paper?
I'm a journalist and recently finished my last article on my last day at the paper I was temping for this summer. I needed to interview someone in the middle class area of the town and had been looking for a case for like two weeks. I reached out to some potential interviewees and found a woman that was arranging an exhibition. She suggested the paper come write about it. I basically just grabbed her and asked if she could make a statement on the area she lived in.
As for her exhibition I told her it was the day after my last shift and that I would suggest my co-worker go do it. I knew he wasn't going to because papers have been cutting back on reporting on cultural events for years now, and he was just not gonna go work on a Saturday for something no one would read (nothing against the artists, people just don't read about exhibitions and in this capitalist hell the newspaper adhere to what gets the most engagement).
We did the interview, I sent her the quotes I was going to use, and I wrote my article and went on vacation.
This afternoon I get a text from her saying she wants to take back her statement. She said she had a great exhibition, that a lot of people came and that it was really interesting. When the paper didn't show up to write about it she felt that she didn't want to help us out with our "problems". (When we did the interview I pretty much told her that I grabbed her because I was desperate, to basically apologize for being very forward.)
Like I said, I am on vacation when receiving this message. I thought I had been able to leave my job satisfied that I'd finished all my articles and this message just really stressed me out. It just felt very petty to do this interview and then punish me when my coworker didn't show up to report on her exhibition.
She has every right to take back her statement but it just felt like when someone is mad at a waitress because the food is too expensive. It's really not my fault that the paper I work for doesn't have the resources to cover every event.
I answered that if she viewed the interview as a transaction where she participated in order to get someone to write about the exhibition, she should have told me so, since I don't pay for statements. I also told her that since I am on vacation she needs to reach out to the paper to get the publisher to erase the quotes. I also gave her the publisher's contact information.
She later responded that she didn't view it as a transaction, that she was just tired of the press taking her for granted.
I felt like a was maybe a bit too harsh here. I guess I did kind of accuse her of trying to buy an article. Am I the buttface?