I’ve been quoted twice in the L.A. Times without an issue, but I only gave them three to four sentences per question. To clarify, I’m not notable enough to arise the ire of an unprofessional journalist; both quotes were part of a man-on-the-street story. Coincidentally, the topic at hand was whether or not the media was misrepresenting a presidential candidate.
There are many people in positions of authority with nary a grain of humor, and who want to present their undertaking as one of world-class importance, with associated gravitas.
Saying you’re “Twelve Guys Out to Save the Universe” doesn’t advance that agenda. It makes you sound like a nerd or fanboy.
I don’t have a problem with it, myself, nor do lots of other people. But iyt might make a difference – at least to stodgy minds – to government funding agencies, alumni donors, and Scientific committees.
Maybe it was just the most photogenic event taking place that day. You’d be surprised how many stories earn prominent play just because the art’s good.
Most of the distortion comes through what is included and what is not, and through subtle implication.
This way, journalists can kid themselves they aren’t lying while being misleading, and can always plausibly deny they meant to imply what they know damn well they were implying. Thus the problem is not that you will be tricked into saying something stupid, but that you will say something intelligent and well rounded.
The world being the complex place that it is, an intelligent and well rounded answer will almost certainly include some mention of an alternate point of view. The journalist’s angle will have been set in concrete regardless of the facts long before they called you. If that angle is the alternate point of view that you have mentioned, then your mention of that alternate point of view may well be all that is printed, regardless of what your overall comments may have been.
I learned this lesson the hard way in court once. I was representing an entity whose business (while legitimate) makes them something of a social pariah because traditionally it is a business whose participants have at times been regarded as behaving like assholes. They had an accident (there was no suggestion of deliberateness) but this accident attracted strict liability criminal sanction nonetheless. They pleaded guilty to the relevant offence. In my address to the court on sentencing I went through all the checks and systems my client had in place to make sure they didn’t accidentally do anything assholish and how through essentially freakish bad luck they had nonetheless had this accident. I concluded my comments by saying (paraphrasing obviously):
“So you can see Your Honour that my client in no way behaved like an asshole”
Big mistake.
The prosecutor disagreed with none of this and agreed that the matter fell into the lowest category of culpability and that only a small fine (a tiny fraction of the maximum possible fine) was warranted in this case. The court agreed and sentenced accordingly. The fine though small by standards relative to the industry, would still amount to a large amount of money by the standards of a private individual.
The story the next day was under the headline “[Social Pariah] denies was an asshole” and said that “Although [Social Pariah]'s lawyer denied that [Social Pariah] was an asshole, the judge convicted [Social Pariah] and imposed a large fine on them in relation to such and such an incident”.
No mention of strict liability. No mention of how small the fine was relatively. No mention of any exculpatory circumstances. No mention that the judge accepted the exculpatory circumstances. Deliberate juxtaposition of denial of assholish behaviour with mention of a conviction as if that denial was not accepted by the court.
In my experience (as a reporter) people are not “tricked” into saying something or misquoted; rather, they say something that makes them look bad and think they’ll get off the hook by pointing fingers at the reporter.
Case in point: once during my fabulous radio career I was covering a school board candidates debate with media and members of the public in attendance. One candidate was going on about how discipline had broken down in the schools and how he’d get students back into line. Someone from the audience asked him if he’d support corporal punishment for students. His response was “Whatever it takes!”.
After I quoted him on it (unfortunately I did not have a tape recorder going at the time) he vehemently denied saying it.
What a lying jerk.
Sure, but going by the other examples here, while the journalist may not be holding up a random portrait and saying it’s a mirror of the source, it’s often not an accurate reflection, either. It’s more like a funhouse mirror where the journalist gets to decide exactly how they use what the source said regardless of context.
Janet Cook, Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass, Jack Kelley , and Christopher Newton would like to agree with you.
We asked Marley23 for comments, but he refused, saying it would make him “look bad” and that he had “legal reasons” for this, although he agreed that reporters in general were “sneaky”, “manipulative”, and “awful”.
Regards,
Shodan
I always suspected someone could be tried in a court of law and legally found to be an asshole 
I wish the prosecuters would pursue this much more aggessively…
When I was doing tsunami relief I was interviewed by the TV arm of a very well-known news agency.
I told the journo I wouldn’t talk about the politics of the situation, and she agreed. I gave what I thought was a thoughtful and articulate interview about what we were doing, and then the cameraman said “oh, sorry, the camera wasn’t recording”.
So we started again, and the reporter asked the same questions, but threw in a question like “How much anger do you have towards the Thai government about the lack of help they’re providing?” Thinking as fast as I could, I said words to the effect of “piss off, I said no politics”, in the hope that my incongruous obscenity would render the clip unusable.
I am not sure if the “camera not on” bit was a ruse or not, but it sure felt like it to me.
(I also stammered and screwed up all my answers the second time round, and ended up looking like a bumbling fool.)
Andrew Glass.
Jayson Blair.
Janet Cooke.
Jack Kelley.
And I’ll even throw in photo fakery in lieu of fabricated quotes: Brian Walski.
So five reporters out of thousands who work in the print media.
I had some friends who did live radio drama who appeared and performed on the Today Show once. The show and hosts got everything wrong, from the name of the organization to the names of the people to when and where they were performing.
The fact that you can only name 4 or 5 reporters (all of whom were FIRED, by the way) out of thousands who have fabricated stories and quotes only proves my point. It’s not something that ever happens.
ETA actually, I guess it happens pretty regularly on Fox News, but I wouldn’t really count that as a news organization.
You can’t quote someone and then say they didn’t comment. I hope I don’t have to explain why. 
(You can say they wouldn’t comment on particular issue if they refuse to do so.) That kind of partial quoting is also discouraged because it makes it obvious you’re leaving something out.
For journalists or anybody else, any kind of “nobody has ever done that” or “nobody would ever do that” defense is going to fall flat. But there are ethical standards for journalism, too.
Five major counter-examples shows that you were right to say it never happens?
Fine - FoxNews never lies about anything.
Regards,
Shodan
Well, what do you think should happen?
I realize that every reporter thinks they are Woodward and/or Bernstein, but do people really actually care about what shows up in the papers or television? I mean care enough to actually do anything?
That’s a good point. People don’t realize how much variation there is between what one person said or saw, and what a reporter says was said or seen. Until they experience it themselves.
My neighbor across the street was shot by the police. I was interviewed by a reporter for the news, because I knew him slightly and my son was pretty good friends with his son.
I went out of my way to make it clear that I thought it was a tragedy for both the family of the guy who was shot, and for the cop who shot him. And I thought I made it clear that I was withholding judgment until the facts were established as clearly as they might be. Not a lot of that made it into the piece - it looked like I was condemning the police out of hand and asserting that it was an unjustified shooting. Because they only quoted part of it.
Reporters and editors sometimes say they are reporting news. They often aren’t - they are telling a story, with Good Guys and Bad Guys and (if possible) either a Happy Ending or a Call to Action. And often they have already written the story in their heads before they get onto the scene.
There was a story some years back about some lesbians who had been murdered in some small town down South. And a horde of reporters converged on the town, eager to write up the horrifying story of how bigots had condemned some innocents to death. It turned out that the murders had nothing much to do with their sexual orientation, and it was more or less a random crime. And all the reporters lost interest - it wasn’t a Good Story anymore. Because there was no happy ending, and they couldn’t work in a call to action.
Regards,
Shodan
As a government functionary, I am strictly forbidden to talk to the press. Press releases go out under the name of the division head, and calls for comment are referred to the press officer, who does not comment. 
I generally agree with Princhester’s take. Press coverage of legal matters often gets a bit distorted because lawyers typically cannot explain the subtleties of a complicated legal matter in terms comprehensible to the general public, so the reporter strives to fit the case into a good-vs-evil paradigm that’s usually a bit too simplistic.
I want to take this chance to say again - most reporters are just trying to do their jobs (especially the more experienced ones), and their job includes getting the information.
If everyone does their parts properly, the necessary information gets out and the story is accurate.
When I said that it’s easy to get someone to say something they don’t want to, keep in mind that when I play “bad journalist” I have no interest in building a relationship with my interview subjects, so burning them doesn’t matter…
In real life, if I was a good journalist, I wouldn’t play that fast and loose.
I have never had a journalist really try to push me around - I have had one reporter that I need to call the News Editor on, but only because the sources they were using were lying…
In my job, we never use No Comment. If I am asked something I can’t talk about, I’ll say i can’t talk about it, either due to OpSec, I don’t know, it’s not within the scope of the story or I won’t speculate…
Things to get better because Teh Evil saw the light of day. The unscrupulous businessman goes out of business, the oppressive working environment changes, the leadership loses their position due to gross mismanagement.
Well, I thought that. I don’t anymore.