11 Getting to the source: quotes and attribution

Quoting a source literally — whether from a speech, press conference, town meeting or one-on-one interview — constitutes an integral part of reporting. Editors and media writing textbooks are quick to point out the advantages of direct quotations as the starting point for news stories.

Direct quotes inject human interest, help make writing sound more natural, break up the dry facts of the story and make the page look more eye-pleasing. Quotes are one of the instruments in the journalist’s toolbox that create transitions and thus improve readability. Broadcast journalists use quotes to let the audience hear the speaker in his or her own words.

We’ve already established that direct quotes bring perspective to a story. They also bring authenticity and credibility. Much of what turns out to be disinformation doesn’t include quotes from any sources at all. In extreme cases, like the made-up “Denver Guardian” story in Chapter 1, disinformation contains manufactured quotes assigned to made-up sources. In biased news stories, people on one side of an issue might be quoted at the expense of the other side. (This is acceptable in opinion columns that are written to make an argument or persuade an audience. But not in news stories.)

As an important tool of the journalist, it’s critical the writer and broadcaster know how to use quotes. Television and radio reporters most often use tape for direct quotes. Sometimes the reporter recites the quote, and at other times quotes are shown as text on the screen. If a television journalist quotes someone else’s words, it helps to say, “Those were her exact words,” or something to that effect.

Online and print reporters along with broadcasters publishing stories on the web have a variety of options for using quotes accurately and effectively. When reporters quote sources, the types of quotes are:

1. Direct quotes use a quoted source’s exact words and are entirely contained in quotation marks. They report word-for-word what a speaker said.Not everything a source says is worthy of a direct quote. So, broadcast and print reporters should only use direct quotes that convey something they can’t say better in their own words. As trained communicators, journalists must often take complicated thoughts and information from sources and translate them for audiences. But, of course, reporters still attribute the information to their sources.
2. Indirect quotations use the source’s ideas partially in his or her own words, but some words or the word order may be changed to make the point clearer. These do not go in quotation marks because indirect quotations do not use the exact words of the source.
3. Paraphrased quotations convey the ideas of a speaker, but the reporter condenses and changes the wording for clarity and conciseness. The speaker’s meaning remains. In quotation marks? No.
4. Partial quotations are a combination of direct and paraphrased quotations. Generally, what’s quoted is either especially clearly said or is sensitive or controversial. Because partial quotations can be disjointed and the words in quotes are sometimes not particularly crucial, AP says journalists often overuse them.In quotation marks? Some words go in quotation marks, but those that aren’t the speakers’ do not.

Attribution

An important part of quoting sources is attributing the information to the speaker. In almost all cases, the verb “said” is the most appropriate attribution verb.

For example: “This is a quote,” the teacher said.

There are other verbs reporters can use, but they should use them infrequently. These include:

• Stated.
• Explained.
• Replied.

Other than said, that’s about it. There are many more to avoid, like these:

• “Hello,” he cried.
• “You’re right,” she admitted.
• “I’m right,” she claimed.

As well as:

• Insisted.
• Whined.
• Declared.
• Confessed.

Our avoidance of these verbs connects to the earlier lesson on using the fairest words possible. Saying someone claims or admits something implies the person might not be telling the truth. Verbs like cried, moaned, whined, sighed and the like are also subjective.

There’s no need to risk prompting the person being quoted to argue with you about your verb choice or maybe call your editor and complain that it put him or her in a false light. That won’t happen with the verb said.

When attributing information, reporters also must cite their sources. That includes the speaker’s name as well as other information that allows the reader to gauge the source’s knowledge, perspective and credibility. For example, an English major and an engineering major likely bring very different backgrounds to their observations. So, it’s helpful to inform the reader of that.

Other facts reporters should include about sources are:

• Age.
• Where the speaker is from.
• Speaker’s current residence.
• School(s) attended.
• Job or position(s) held.
• Year in school (if a student).
• Major (now or when a student).

Um, uh, well . . .

People rarely speak in complete sentences, and they often mispronounce or misarticulate words. Print journalists confront this issue every day. What does a reporter do with a quote that is not grammatically correct or breaks other rules of standard English?

Reporters traditionally have had broad discretion in determining the content of direct quotes. Previous guidelines have been based on good intentions rather than on knowledge of implications and, especially, consequences for the source.

Media-writing textbooks over the years have offered somewhat arbitrary and inconsistent recommendations for cleaning up a source’s quotes. One textbook argued it is not only permissible but necessary to clean up quotes because people fail to speak concisely. Another stressed that a journalist’s policy should be to place only the speaker’s exact words inside quotation marks.

Other textbooks advise journalists to take the honest approach by precisely quoting sources when the words are clear and to paraphrase when they are not. One textbook suggests grammatical mistakes should be corrected only when they come from sources who are unaccustomed to speaking with journalists. Yet another says changing quotes is acceptable if the person quoted would recognize the errors in print.

Since many of those guidelines conflict with each other, let’s consult the journalist’s Bible. The AP Stylebook says, “Never alter quotations even to correct minor grammatical errors or word usage.” Then, just a few paragraphs later, the stylebook tells writers not to quote sources as saying “gonna” or “wanna,” calling them “substandard spellings.” If you’ve ever interviewed people, then you know almost everyone says “gonna” and “wanna.” If you should never alter quotes but can’t quote people using those words, that really limits your ability to directly quote people.

If that weren’t confusing enough, then the stylebook turns around and says writers actually can use substandard spellings “to convey an emphasis by the speaker.” In other words, don’t do it, except if you want to

(By the way, “never alter quotations” has been the style rule since 1990. Before that, the stylebook recommended quotes “normally should be corrected” to remove spoken errors that, if printed, would embarrass a source.)

OK. So, our guides continue to be inconsistent about how to quote sources. Maybe we should consult a source even higher than the journalist’s Bible. How about the U.S. Supreme Court?

In Masson v. New Yorker Magazine, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, “Writers and reporters by necessity alter what people say, at the very least to eliminate grammatical and syntactical infelicities,” and ruled that deliberately altering quotes does not necessitate libel. Well, that’s a relief.

Everyone who has ever interviewed someone and then had to figure out which quotes to use and which to paraphrase knows just what Kennedy was talking about. People often don’t speak grammatically. They do say “gonna” and “wanna” and incorrectly use many of the grammar rules taught in this very book. They speak in run-on sentences. And fragments. Their pronouns don’t agree with their antecedents.

While changing “gonna” to “going to” can’t get a reporter sued, there are still issues to consider. Those textbooks that said it’s OK to change quotes imply that directly quoting nonstandard speech affects the way a speaker is perceived. Research has proven that to be true. Making grammatical mistakes and speaking with regional dialects are detrimental to the perception of the intelligence of people quoted in stories according to research by this writer. That means, directly quoting a source who uses less-than-perfect speech amounts to making this source “look stupid,” comparatively speaking.

Put another way, writers and editors are placed in a position to make a source appear less intelligent by citing his or her imperfect speech—or to remove any mistakes, thereby making the source seem more intelligent to readers than he or she otherwise might appear. That’s a lot of power. And news organizations that abuse this power are the ones the first section of this book warns against.

Speakers using less-than-perfect English are likely to find radio or television coverage of their interviews particularly unforgiving. Unlike printed quotes, recorded interviews present every sputter and stutter, as well as every hesitation and potentially embarrassing pause. There’s the often-shared complaint that network and local TV news reporters inevitably interview the guy with missing teeth or the woman with the thick accent; the guy with the do-rag or the kid who repeatedly says “ain’t.”

More egregiously, the creators of disinformational or biased news sometimes go out of their way to broadcast the gaffes of public officials or people they disagree with politically, often taking the mistakes out of context. In more extreme cases, tape is altered to misrepresent reality. In one famous 2019 incident, video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was slowed and manipulated to make it sound as if she was garbling her words.

So, no wonder journalists’ choice of which quotes to use can profoundly influence the perception of their sources.

So, What Is the Journalist to Do?

Students sometimes think reporters should clean up quotes of public officials to avoid embarrassing them. They also say reporters should leave grammatical mistakes in the quotes of regular people, such as those not in positions of power.

But our guiding journalistic principles bring us to a different, more nuanced, conclusion. We must consider fairness and accuracy. We also have to keep in mind the idea of “holding the powerful accountable.”

If a spoken mistake is out of context or doesn’t add anything to the reader’s understanding of the source, then changing “gonna” to “going to” is OK. This is especially true for people who are not in positions of power. As the research showed, quoting grammatical mistake doesn’t add anything to the quote, but it does possibly give an inaccurate impression of the speaker’s intelligence.

The same criteria can be applied to quoting elected officials or other decision makers—think university presidents or corporate leaders. If those people make an occasional verbal slip, there’s likely no need to draw attention to it. To do that out of context is to go down the slippery slope of “fake news” purveyors who make some authority figures look worse than others in order to sway the opinions of audience members.

Yet, when we factor in “holding the powerful accountable,” it gives us something else to consider. If officials and leaders regularly misspeak, make odd or confusing statements or, worst of all, lie or obfuscate, then it’s the reporter’s duty to let readers know.

That can mean we quote the leader directly, mistakes and all. The reason is, people who are subject to the leader’s position of authority need to know these things. Then they can make decisions on whether or not the person is fit to stay in the position.

A former editor-in-chief of Esquire magazine, Arnold Gingrich, once said, “The cruelest thing you can do to anybody is to quote him literally.” But what may seem cruel to the speaker may be just the information a citizen needs to make a decision about who to vote for or whether a tax-supported leader is competent to hold a job.