Media Ethics: Issues and Cases 8th Edition by Philip Patterson, Lee Wilkins

Exercise 6

Can I Quote Me on That?
CHAD PAINTER
Eastern New Mexico University
During an Aug. 19, 2012, interview with St. Louis television station KTVI-TV, Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin said women cannot get pregnant from "legitimate rape" because their bodies have ways to block unwanted pregnancies. Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney quickly condemned the comments, calling them "insulting, inexcusable, and frankly, wrong" and saying that he found the comments "offensive" and "entirely without merit," according to an article in the National Review Online.
But did Romney actually say those words?
There is question because government and campaign officials regularly grant interviews to journalists only under the condition of quote approval, according to New York Times writer Jeremy Peters. Quote approval, Time media critic James Poniewozik wrote, is when a journalist agrees to send his or her source quotes to be "redacted, stripped of colorful metaphors, colloquial language and anything even mildly provocative."
Peters wrote that Romney and his campaign advisers almost always require quote approval from any conversation, and that journalists quoting any of Romney's five sons use only quotations approved by his press office. Quote approval also is the accepted norm for President Barack Obama, his top strategists, and almost all of his midlevel aids in Chicago and Washington.
Several major news organizations-including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Reuters, Bloomberg, Vanity Fair, and National Journal -have accepted the practice of quote approval in political stories, according to Peters. (There also is a long-standing, problematic tradition of quote approval for celebrity news and certain types of sports stories.) One reason for the acquiescence by reporters, Poniewozik wrote, is that a reporter who does not accept the condition could be scooped by another reporter who did. A second reason is that reporters often are desperate to pick the brains of a politician or his top strategists. Finally, each of the reporters Peters interviewed said that the meanings of quotes were not altered, and that changes were always small and seemingly unnecessary.
Many journalists perform accuracy checks with sources, ensuring that the quotes and information gained from a source are correct. Some publications require accuracy checks. However, quote approval is quite different from an accuracy check.
The quote approval requirement really is a struggle between reporters and politicians for power and control. News is a construction of reality (Gulati, Just and Crigler 2004) dependent on the relationship of a news organization with other institutions, interests, or groups in a society (Baldasty 1992; Shoemaker and Reese 1996). News about political campaigns is an ongoing negotiation-or power struggle-between journalists, editors, and owners on one side, and candidates, campaign staffers, and party activists on the other (Gulati et al. 2004). The media need a steady, reliable flow of the raw material of news (Herman and Chomsky 2002). Journalists become reliant on their sources because of this constant need for new information, and this reliance allows sources to dictate terms of coverage.
Politicians and their campaign staffs also could be asserting control, calling off the hounds of an attack-dog press. Sabato (2000) suggests that attack journalism during presidential campaigns causes candidates to become increasingly secretive because of their fear of reporters. The result is that politicians limit press access except under highly controlled situations (Sabato 2000). The ultimate highly controlled situation is for a politician to grant interviews only when he or she knows any quote can be deleted or changed.
Should reporters disclose to their readers when they have submitted a story for quote approval? Kovach and Rosentiel (2007) argue that journalism's first obligation is to the truth, and journalists' first loyalty is to citizens. Journalists should report honestly to their readers (Associated Press 2012) and should disclose unavoidable conflicts (Society of Professional Journalists 2012).