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Aug 02
Honest journalistic question time:
When you transcribe a suspect’s words from a video for a text piece, do you clean up their grammar?
This is the example I spotted last night:
wcbstv.com – ROUND 2: Wild Knife Fight At NYC Deli
“All I know is my wounds are deep,” explained 29 year-old Arno Ortho.
But that’s not what he said. His exact line was, “All I know is my wounds is deep or whatever.”
The “or whatever” thing grates on me, but I can understanding cutting it out. But changing the incorrect second “is” to “are” is just changing the quote and bad journalism.
Aug 02, 2008 @ 10:25:35
When I was in journalism school for those two brief quarters, we were told that we quoted words EXACTLY or we paraphrased them without a quote. One or the other. No clean-ups.
This is just bad journalism. The person who wrote it needs to go back to school. But then, most “journalists” nowadays need some schooling on their trade.
I got out of journalism because I cared too much about the people I was expected to report on, which made it impossible for me to even pretend to impartiality. With today’s standards, maybe I should’ve stayed in. I’d be better at the technical and ethical bits than these guys.