The complaint is as familiar as pine pollen in Georgia. Reporters too often pick apart a comment, using — from the interviewee’s perspective anyway — the wrong statement. The result is that the comment seems out of context and may even indicate the exact opposite of what the speaker intended.
That’s the essence of a flap between Editor and Publisher magazine and Monster.com, the on-line job placement service. According to E&P, Gordon Borrell is a contributing editor for the American Press institute, but has no relationship with E&P. Borrell, it seems, wrote an article for the API’s on-line newsletter. Monster.com used quotes from Borrell’s article in a promotional presentation, but only used the part of the quote that emphasized the advantages of the Internet over newspapers as the preferred medium for job recruiting.
E&P complained, of course, about the misattribution. Borrell’s response? “I wish they had quoted the second part of what I said — which is that the combination of newspapers and Internet will basically kick Monster’s butt to the Moon.”
There’s no denying that Monster.com screwed up the attribution, a mistake for which the organization should be soundly chastised. And obviously, Borrell was writing an article, not being interviewed. But there is another important point here, one that journalists and other spokesperson alike should realize: If you don’t want it reported, don’t say it.
As interview subjects we have the responsibility to guide the reporter’s attention to the statement that is quotable. It would be nice if we could hold up a little flashing neon sign that says, “Begin quote here,” and another one for the close quote. But short of that, there are techniques that indicate to a reporter what is quotable and what is background or explanatory. A spokesperson who fails to learn and practice those techniques is likely to wind up with quotes that are, to say the least, less than satisfactory.
Interestingly, journalists turn out to be as sensitive to this issue as their non-media counterparts.
Newsweek Senior Writer Seth Mnookin, was interviewed by the web site www.mediabistro.com about his experience covering the news media for Brill’s Content and Inside.Com.
“Two things surprised me,” Mnookin said, “My peers’ frenzied interest in any kind of media reporting, and how nervous journalists are about being quoted about anything. I covered the McCain campaign for Brill’s, and one big thing he had going for him was that, for him, nothing was off the record. There I was plopped down in the middle of maybe a hundred reporters traveling with him, and a lot of them were incredibly skittish about having anything on the record.”
