Comments on: RootsTube: Down Under Florida–The Miltons http://blog.epcrowe.com/archives/111 Genealogy, Writing, and More Wed, 05 Sep 2012 00:48:37 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Andrea Batcho http://blog.epcrowe.com/archives/111#comment-78 Andrea Batcho Wed, 20 Aug 2008 05:51:28 +0000 http://blog.epcrowe.com/2008/08/18/rootstube-down-under-florida-the-miltons/#comment-78 I agree that they wonderfully demonstrated the techniques that I use everyday when I research my family (I have a lot of cousins). However, I have a problem with the fact that these people were not their family and they never explicitly said that they had permission to commercially publish the information. Granted, the information that they published was not illegal. After doing countless interviews with my distant relations, I always assure them that I will show them what I am about to publish in writing and have them sign off on it. I also find myself assuring them that I will not publish anything that could possibly be construed as judgmental, and anything they tell me as such will be forgotten.

As a fellow professional genealogist, it ethically bothered me that these things occurred in the piece:

12:45
Mentioning that Charles Milton dropped out of high school

13:10
Mentioning that Charles Milton was divorced two times

15:48
George’s statements, “The son drops out of school, has some unsuccessful marriages, goes into the military. Left Florida. Maybe he even ran from Florida to get away from the unhappy memories. We just don’t know.”

As I stated in my blog, I always go through the *Grandma Test* in my head before I communicate anything about a deceased person. Would my grandmother want me talking about her high school experience, marriages, and why she left the state to anyone, much less a television program that made money off of it? She wouldn’t. In fact, I’m pretty sure she would come out of her grave and strangle me the next time I go to replace the artificial flowers there. I’d hate to think of the things she’d say to me if I did that and she were alive, but that’s okay, I know better.

-andrea

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