In one of my first posts for Talking Biz 2, I wrote about the process of quote approvals and its prevalence in business journalism. The esteemed New York Times columnist David Carr took up the story on Monday. He writes about his own experience:
I’ve had my own encounters. Within the past year, I’ve had a communications executive at a media company ask me to run quotations by him after an interview with the chief executive. I’ve had analysts, who are in the business of giving their opinion, ask me to e-mail the portion of the conversation that I intended to print. And not long ago, a spokesman, someone paid to talk, refused to put his name to a statement. Most of the time I push back, but if it’s something I feel I absolutely need, I start negotiating.
Which bring up the question, how do you make that call and when do you start to negotiate? Do you even have the ability and leverage to push back?
Obviously the answers to these questions depend on the situation, your relationship with the source, the story, your experience and tons of other variables.
But here are a few suggestions:
None of this is black and white. I know from my own time as a business journalist that sometimes your editor is demanding a quote 10 minutes ago from one particular type of person, leaving you at the mercy of the approval process if you want to make the boss happy. It’s a tough balance.
But just having the debate and getting people to think about pushing back is a start. I know a lot of seasoned reporters who rarely allow quote approvals. And they still have colorful quotes from important people in their pieces.
And here’s another point to consider: most reporters who interview people on the street or eye witnesses to an event get the spelling of their name, age, and information, but don’t check the quotes or clean up grammar. Sometimes local news has the most colorful personalities, quotes and interesting details, much of which would likely be edited out by a press officer.
By allowing executives, analysts and others closely related to business screen their words, we’re adding to the myth that these people are better than the average citizen. And it’s one more way they get to play by another set of rules.
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I had a guy in a government office ask me for quote approval yesterday. My standard line is to politely tell such people that it is against general journalistic practice to send out stories prior to publishing for a number of reasons. I told him if I got something wrong in a quote for whatever reason, he could email me and I'd fix it through a correction. Generally the only time I'll cede on this is if a source pushes back and tries to recant everything they said on record. At this point it becomes easier to play nice, especially if it is someone you'll need to talk to again. Great article.