While driving to lunch today, I heard a clip of Pres. Bush praising the service of Lt. Gen. Sanchez as “exemplarary.” This is nothing unusual for our neologist-in-chief, and, as has been pointed out in threads in the past, anybody whose every public word is scrutinized is going to have some verbal bloopers.
I was toying with starting a humorous (or intended to be so, anyway) thread inspired by this latest utterance, perhaps on the merits of a “No President Left Behind Act.” But, wanting to be a good doper, I checked Yahoo News for a link, and instead found this:
So, rather than the mildly partisan thread I intended to start, I now have what I hope is a non-partisan question for any journalists or media types out there. How often do reporters “clean up” a politicians speech? Are there established guidelines? There is of course a huge difference between removing an “uh” here and there and completely paraphrasing a particulary contorted bit of speech, but where is the line drawn between politeness and journalistic malfeasance?
And, in an appropriate bit of karmic justice, I realize after previewing and posting that I have at least three grammar or spelling errors in the OP. So please insert the following as appropriate:[ul]
[li]politicians’[/li][li]politician’s[/li][li]particularly[/li][/ul]
Journalists don’t tend, when quoting people, to quote them phonetically, so they standardize accents, dialectual pronunciations, and mispronunciations. It’s the same reason that if you read a newspaper’s account of Kennedy’s inaugural, it won’t say he said…“Let the wuud go fawth…”
Captain Amazing, but isn’t there a difference between standardizing dialect and accent and correcting garbled words? Kennedy and Bush both have a number of words betraying strong regional influence, and in print there’s no need to convey that.
So, back to my question of where the line is. Standardizing dialect, accent and mispronunciation seems to be common practice. Changing a non-word to a common English word is also done, though I don’t know if this is common. Where does this practice end, exactly?
“Never alter quotations even to correct minor grammatical errors or word usage. Casual minor toungue slips may be removed by using ellipses but even that should be done with extreme caution.”
However, it continues “do not routinely use abnormal spellings such as ‘gonna’ in attempts to convey regional dialects or mispronunciations, Such spellings are appropriate when relevant or help to convey a desired touch in a feature.”
I assume “exemplarary” fits into the mispronunciation exception.
Unoffically, print reporters and editors have been cleaning up quotes for at least a half-century that I know of. It’s a little more difficult in TV and radio.
I will clean up quotes when I’m audio or videoediting. Obviously you need extra pictures to cover a video edit.
The reason for this is that sometimes people get stuck on camera. You can have maybe four or five seconds of errs, umms, and repeated words. It’s painful to watch, it reflects badly on the speaker, and <i>it doesn’t reflect their true eloquence or intelligence</i>.
Firstly because everyone gets camera shy, plus with a camera interview, it’s hard to refer to notes (unlike in a speech, or a phone interview, or a one-to-one written interview.
Secondly because those five seconds of umm might occur in a 15 second soundbite from a total five or ten minute interview. The rest of the interview might be flawless - but the stumble unfortunately happens during the most relevant bit that you want to quote them on.
Finally: at the end of the day you’re not doing anyone a disfavour, or lying, or bending the truth. (You could edit someone in such a way to bend their words, but that would obviously be totally unethical). Cleaning up - in moderation - is no different to putting on a bit of make up. Sure the person might look more of a dragon first thing in the morning without it, but it doesn’t hurt for them to look a little more presentable when in the public eye. Total raw truth would have us all walking around in the nude.
I suppose this is the core of what makes me uncomfortable with the practice, and why I asked what the real world guidelines are. Yes, anyone in the limelight can be made to look like an idiot if every hesitation sound, mispronunciation, etc., were highlighted in the media. But what about the case of a public figure whose lack of verbal skills does reflect their true eloquence, or lack thereof. Would the press be doing a disservice to the public by minimizing this person’s verbal failings?
(And no, as much as I am tempted due to my own political beliefs to say this about Pres. Bush, I must say that as much as I disagree with him I don’t really think he is unintelligent, just that he doesn’t look his best when speaking ex tempore.)
So is it fair to say that while the official standards allow for very little alteration, in the real world the amount of cleansing is up to the reporter, editor, news director, etc., and thus will vary greatly?
But the press cannot be allowed to make the distinction between this and the other case. So they can either clean everybody up or print everybody’s quotes verbatim.
Each news organisastion will have their own rules and standards. Broadcast is different to print of course. Obviously, with Broadcast, you have live situations where quotes cannot be cleared up. But we have as humans a greater tolerance for live errors - you know it is live, the person is on the spot, etc. Plus, you’re getting a bigger slice of them, not just a small quote, so again usually the errors/misspeak gets buried by a bigger chunk of greater eloquence.
A BBC radio journalist once told me about a situation that rather wracked his conscious. He interviewed a highly eminent, respected and learned old professor about some specialist subject (say history). The problem was the guy mumbled and rambled, and the resulting tape just sounded dreadful. No amount of editing (it was to go in an edited programme, not as just an interview) could save it.
So this journo wrote down what the guy was saying, but in a more edited fashion. It wasn’t a case of changing words or inventing stuff - it was what the professor had said, just in coherent form. He went back to the professor and apologised profusely, saying there had been a terrible technical mishap and the tape was ruined. But he had managed to note down what the professor had said - would the professor mind re-recording the interview with the journalist’s notes of his original speech as a prompter?
The professor was fine with this, and thanks to the coherent notes to prompt him, gave an excellent interview. This situation might be compared to a politician having pre-prepared speeches written by a professional speechwriter - they would rarely speak off the cuff.