"I was shocked to read that Jonah Lehrer had quit his job at the New Yorker, after admitting that he fabricated some quotations from Bob Dylan in his recent book Imagine: How Creativity Works. I was shocked because what Lehrer did is consistent with the standard behavior of journalists, though perhaps not with the official story of what this behavior is supposed to be like. But the actual practice, in which journalists often put between quotation marks whatever representation of a source's opinions they feel that their narrative needs, was validated by judicial decision in a famous case involving another New Yorker writer 25 years ago — someone who is still on the magazine's staff."
How interesting — and appalling. Speaking for myself, I have never put a quote in anything I have written that wasn't what the person said. I have fixed the grammar a bit, because we often don't speak as precisely as we write, but that's about it. Whenever I was not quite sure what the person said, I got in touch with them and ran the quote by them. But then, for me, being precise and accurate when it comes to reporting amounts to a sacred trust.
Mark Liberman:
ReplyDelete"I was shocked to read that Jonah Lehrer had quit his job at the New Yorker, after admitting that he fabricated some quotations from Bob Dylan in his recent book Imagine: How Creativity Works. I was shocked because what Lehrer did is consistent with the standard behavior of journalists, though perhaps not with the official story of what this behavior is supposed to be like. But the actual practice, in which journalists often put between quotation marks whatever representation of a source's opinions they feel that their narrative needs, was validated by judicial decision in a famous case involving another New Yorker writer 25 years ago — someone who is still on the magazine's staff."
Jonah Lehrer, Bob Dylan, and journalistic unquotations
How interesting — and appalling. Speaking for myself, I have never put a quote in anything I have written that wasn't what the person said. I have fixed the grammar a bit, because we often don't speak as precisely as we write, but that's about it. Whenever I was not quite sure what the person said, I got in touch with them and ran the quote by them. But then, for me, being precise and accurate when it comes to reporting amounts to a sacred trust.
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