What\'s Up With Quote Approval? A Call for Reporters and Sources to Weigh In

By DAVID CARR

In Monday's Media Equation column, I wrote about the trend toward sources requiring quote approval, a practice that seems to be growing like kudzu.

So, are sources trying to get their busy hands all over something that belongs rightfully to reporters, or are sources, tired of having their words mangled, pushing back because they have to?

While I was writing the column, I was reminded of an incident that took place before I came to work at The New York Times. I was working at Inside.com, an early Web newsroom, in 2000 and had published something that kicked up a lot of dust. The main subject called me and said, and I am definitely paraphrasing, that I had misquoted him - dropping context and adding stray words - and in general had given a very incomplete picture of what he said. This part I remember: “What you published was only an approximation of what I said, not what I said.”

My ears burned because it had been extremely loud in the room during our initial interview, I had been on deadline and I am not the most efficient typist at the best of times.

The source who complained? Bill Keller, who went on to become the executive editor of The Times and my boss. At the time, we talked out our disagreement and eventually came to an understanding, but the lesson of that day stayed with me. As I said in the column, journalism is a blunt technology. Until we arrive at real-time transcription (it's not that far away) even the best reporters will get at least the small things wrong - unless they have time to tape and transcribe, which is a rarity in this rapid-fire age.

Marc Andreessen, the oft-quoted Silicon Valley investor, sent me a note saying that mangled rhetoric is endemic.

I'd like to agree with you on quotation approvals, but I have to tell you that something like 80 percent of the things attributed to me in the press are not things I actually said. Para phrasing has run amok, and it often changes the context and meaning. It's really frustrating on the source end.

The only entities that don't have this problem in my experience are the ones with full-time fact checkers.

He's got a point. Sometimes we type, we lose our place, we start again, and it is what is left out, or elided, that ends up twisting meaning. But Buzz Bissinger, the well-known author of narrative nonfiction books, suggests that the cure of submitting quotes for approval is a far worse disease.

“It is a deal with the devil,” he said. “They don't want quote approval because their words are getting mangled, they do it because they don't want the real person revealed.”

Mr. Bissinger said that neither “A Prayer for the City” or “Friday Night Lights” would have happened if the sources were able to approve the quotes. (It is worth pointing out here that neither the McClatchy newspaper chain nor National Journal allow the practice.)

“No newspaper should to it,” he said. “If we all said no, they'd still talk to us, because they need us. We're not dead yet.”

Mr. Bissinger, who called early and ranted for a bit, finished by saying, “Do me a favor, whatever you quote, please call and read it back to me.” He waited a beat before he started laughing and hung up the phone.

So we've heard from a journalist, a source and someone who has been both. We'd like to hear from more of you. So you P.R. people and sources, do you find that you are generally quoted accurately in the press, or are reporters constantly and chronically wrong in some aspects? And all you reporters and editors: what is your experience with sources asking for quote approval? And is there a better way to insure accuracy?