The Quote, the Whole Quote and Nothing but the Quote

THE first true blizzard of the first public editor's first season began Sunday, Dec. 21. The lead headline on the front page of The Times declared, ''Strong Support Is Found for Ban on Gay Marriage." Reading the article over my morning coffee, I wondered why a single poll - The Times's own, co-sponsored by CBS - was itself considered news (at least one other released around the same time showed substantially different results). But for the next two weeks, rising drifts of e-mail provoked by the piece made me realize my attention belonged elsewhere.

Most correspondents felt that the 55 percent of those polled favoring a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage did not constitute ''strong support." Many others, called to arms by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, objected to the phrasing of the poll questions, and to the unequal number of pro- and anti-amendment respondents quoted in the article (three to one). Additionally, read the complaint posted on Glaad's Web site, ''the story sensationalized and misrepresented poll results, failing to ask basic poll questions that would have allowed respondents to consider the full range of issues at play."

These are substantive objections, but each seems arguable: a 55-40 split (the rest had no opinion) would constitute a landslide in any election this side of Beijing. I'm not convinced that any poll questions on so volatile an issue can be truly nonprejudicial. And as for the imbalance of interview subjects, when man bites dog, you talk to the dog: the news here was the increased support for the proposed amendment relative to previous polls.

I'm still puzzled by the notion that a poll conducted by The Times is front page material. Without a detailed explanation of methodology, how can a reader figure out why this poll is more reliable than those conducted by competing news organizations? And wouldn't a thorough piece of journalism at least report on other polls that have different results? The Times isn't alone in this habit, of course, but when any news organization touts its own polls while failing to note reputable polls conducted by others, I pat my pocket to make sure my wallet is still there. This isn't news; this is awfully close to promotion.

But my gravest concern about the piece, shared by scores of my correspondents (both supporters and opponents of the amendment), has to do with a dicier journalism issue: the fair representation of quotations. In this case, the problem was not the alteration of words, but their absence. Seven paragraphs into the article, reporter Katharine Q. Seelye, who shared the byline with Janet Elder (one of the editors who supervise The Times's polling operation), quoted a comment President Bush had made a few days earlier: ''I will support a constitutional amendment which would honor marriage between a man and a woman, codify that."

But the president had actually teed up his statement, made to Diane Sawyer in an ABC News interview, with a potent qualifier: ''If necessary," he said, ''I will support. . . ." I cannot believe that these were words the president uttered lightly. I imagine they were arrived at with a great deal of forethought, analysis and even calculation. The rumbling they evoked from pro-amendment as well as anti-amendment partisans indicates how fragile a hedge the president was cultivating. ''If necessary" could suggest that the president wouldn't support a constitutional amendment if the recent Massachusetts court decision were reversed by the Legislature; or if the Supreme Court got involved; or who knows, maybe not if "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" dropped out of next season's Bravo lineup. Politically, you could reasonably assume that the truly necessary part of the president's statement was ''if necessary."

The elision in the Seelye-Elder article was not, as several of my correspondents insist, ''politically motivated," or ''unethical" or a ''blatant manipulation of the facts." It was a simple mistake. When first reported in The Times by White House correspondent Elisabeth Bumiller on Dec. 17, the president's comments appeared in two separate sentences: the news ("I will support") followed immediately by the qualification (''But Mr. Bush said he would support an amendment only 'if necessary' to preserve traditional marriage"). Washington editor Rick Berke asked Seelye to freshen the poll data (it was more than a week old) by referencing the president's recent comment. After searching the Times database, Seelye told me via e-mail, ''I took the quote directly from Elisabeth Bumiller's story, which, unbeknownst to me, was foreshortened." No one caught it during the editing process, and foreshortened it remained.

In the months before I started in this job, two instances of Times columnists' truncating or eliding quotations made some readers apoplectic. I'm trying to stay away from issues that arose before I started here, except insofar as they relate to running stories, so I'll leave further discussion of those incidents to critics, polemicists and the columnists' loved ones. But deciding when a quote begins and when it ends is something that nearly every writer faces in nearly every story, and there are no firm rules to follow. Even The Times's detailed policy on quotations doesn't address this. ''Readers should be able to assume that every word between quotation marks is what the speaker or writer said," according to the paper's ''Guidelines on Our Integrity." ''The Times does not 'clean up' quotations." (I'd better play by strict rules here: The policy continues for another eight sentences, but none concerns the beginning or ending of quotations. Trust me.)

Whether plucked from a press conference or a barroom conversation, quotes are not just reported - they're selected. Subject goes on at length; reporter picks a few especially revealing, juicy or simply interesting sentences; presses roll; and, later, the subject cries, ''Taken out of context!" But except when a newspaper prints verbatim transcripts, all quotations are taken out of context. The context is the actual conversation or press conference in which words get uttered; the printed pages of a newspaper can only rudely duplicate it.

The business of quoting is inherently artificial. Selection is editing. Ask any film critic who sees his words misappropriated for an advertisement. Newspaper reporters and editors may be more conscientious than movie studio promotion departments (and they don't slap an exclamation point on the tail of every sentence), but the hunt for words to put between quotation marks may be a relic no more vital than the hardened city editor of long ago, green eyeshade on his brow and Lucky Strike hanging from his lip, barking to the trembling cub reporter, ''Go back and get me a quote!" A worthy quote? A revealing quote? A quote for its own sake? Doesn't matter - just get me one. When Joe DiMaggio was a young ballplayer and a reporter asked him for a quote, he didn't know what the man was talking about. ''I thought it was some kind of soft drink," DiMaggio remembered.

Defenders of quote-chasing say it's necessary for verisimilitude (even if the selection process is arbitrary), for color (if so, that's an unhappy comment on a writer's ability to render a scene vividly) and, crucially, for balance. But even this last motivation often leaves us listening in on banter that wouldn't dignify an elementary school playground, especially during a political season. Just last week, a Howard Dean spokeswoman told a Times reporter asking about a John Kerry criticism, ''What you're seeing is a career politician desperate to save his political career." This is not to knock the spokeswoman, whose rebuttal was no less dignified than those made by her counterparts in the other candidates' camps, but for all the enlightenment this provided Times readers she might as well have said, "And so's your mother." Wouldn't it be sufficient - and maybe even raise the level of the public conversation an inch or two - for the reporter simply to write, ''A Dean spokeswoman dismissed Senator Kerry's charge as political"?

But I'm afraid we'll see reporters stop chasing quotes around the same time dogs stop chasing cars. Until then, we just have to hope that quotations are rendered accurately and fairly. (Is this a shot across the bows of columnists, editorial writers and the public editor? You bet it is.) The Times seems to be pretty good about rectifying misquotations; in early December, when Mississippi State football coach Sylvester Croom's spoken ''ain't" was prettified into standard English, a correction appeared swiftly. So too with the missing ''if necessary," restored to the president's lips three days after its unfortunate disappearance.

But the two instances are different. In addition to being rendered inaccurately, Coach Croom's words may have lost a little of their flavor in the process; President Bush's were stripped of a crucial part of their meaning. Deputy national editor Alison Mitchell told me that ''as soon as we became aware" of the shortened Bush quote, ''we made a correction, and we believe the correction was sufficient." But maybe there's a new category of correction needed for errors that distort meaning, as distinct from errors that fumble facts. There's a difference between misspelling St. Catharines, Ontario (not ''St. Catherine's," readers of the corrections column learned on Christmas morning) and misreporting the president's words. Judging by the reader mail that snowed me under in the days after Dec. 21, it's partly the paper's grudging unwillingness to acknowledge the relative importance of an error that makes some readers think that innocent missteps, like the dropped ''if necessary," are willful misdeeds. All quotations may be created equal, but all misquotations are not.

The public editor, who serves as the readers' representative, may be reached by e-mail: public@nytimes.com. Telephone messages: (212) 556-7652. His column will appear at least twice monthly in this section.

This guy's a complete fraud. I emailed him chapter and verse on a falsified Iraq story, with more-than-adequate proof and links from his own damn paper.

I got an automated "your message has been received. You will be contacted" Didn't happen; never heard a peep. The false story, which implied that Americans were unilaterally cooping innocent civilians up behind barbed wire, still sits in the archive, errors intact.

Conclusion: Okrent's a fraud. The readership is starting to gag on the Times's systematic lies, and Dan Okrent appears in the role of a spoonful of mock contrition to make the lies go down better.

Sorry. Quoting Joe DiMaggio and being a hero to fantasy sports geeks doesn't impress.

This Michelle Malkin column [national review.com] describes the Jayson Blair-like scandal building around Blair buddy Charlie Le Duff. In September 2003, LeDuff falsified quotes from a Naval officer, expecting that the seaman would be far at sea when the story ran. Despite the officer's testimony that quotes attributed to him by name and attributed to his wife "were completely fabricated by Mr. LeDuff." A junior Times editor stood behind the [minority] reporter, and sent a snooty email to the officer, essentially calling him a liar, and suggesting that he's beneath the New York Times. Then in late November, a Page 1 leDuff story on kayaking turned out to be plaigiarized from a book on the same subject. The Times ran a mealy-mouthed, incomplete and patently insincere "correction" on Dec. 8. But Okrent remains invisible on the story, and LeDuff is still writing (or copying, which is more his style) whatever he pleases.

So... the "Paper of Record" might be tired of being called on its lies, but it isn't done lying, fabricating, and slanting, and Dan Okrent's role in the whole megillah is to run interference on some of the smaller cases so the big ones can cruise by.

As an ombudsman (a term the Times culture couldn't abide, so he's a "public editor") he's a complete failure already. Neither he nor the paper is really serious about integrity.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

This Marvin Olasky column [worldmag.com] has more on Charlie LeDuff, including the exact quotes the naval officer said, and the exact quotes lying LeDuff turned them into.

I really can't do better than quote Mr Olasky: "In general, the military officers I've known are more honest than the Times reporters I've encountered."

One correction to my previous post: I said that the guy that sent the snooty reply to Commander Beidler was a junior editor. Bill Borders is a pretty junior guy in the grand scheme of things, he's the clown that rubber-stamps LeDuff's tall tales, but his title is technically "senior" editor.

How can you tell the Times is lying? ....They published today.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

Like you, I've sent some email to the Public Editor about my perceptions of bias in the Times -- especially their general bias against the U. S. military. I've received replies from them and sent a bit of follow up.

I don't know if they are thinking about a story on this topic, but it's possible. So I'd encourage Freepers to keep up you comment to the Times if you're a regular reader of their stories.

In my notes to them I try to be very polite, and not assume bad faith on the part of the Public Editor office. They are new to the job, and so far at least they seem sincere.

"cooping up" -- unfortunately I put a lot of verbiage between the "cooping" and the "up."

There were several threads on the story at the time, which I posted to. What's funny is that they said that the soldiers, with no way to talk to the locals, were intimidating them.

Actually it was an Iraqi operation, conducted by the Iraqi Civil Defence Corps, and you could see ICDC policemen in the Times photos accompanying the story. The US soldiers backed 'em up. The Times completely inverted it so that here came these bully Americans who terrorized these innocent people. They wrote the Iraqi presence completely out of the story, to fit their preconceived slant. Typical.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

In my notes to them I try to be very polite, and not assume bad faith on the part of the Public Editor office. They are new to the job, and so far at least they seem sincere.

That's probably where I'm messing up. My "polite" is probably somebody else's "rant," but I'm proud of myself for toning it down from "jeremiad."

I disagree with you about sincerity, though, and about the very value of sincerity. I suppose Okrent is sincere, but it matters little, because he has no authority, and the people above him are not -- they are just looking for damage control.

With Blair, Bragg, and LeDuff, they have been caught with three serial plagiarists in less than twelve months. "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action." And they are standing behind their latest liar boy just like they're still standing behind their Duranty pulitzer. The Washington Post at least had the decency to return Janet Cooke's. But then, the Post is not so full of its "greatness" as the Times is, which is why the Post, certainly as liberal as the Times, is a better paper.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

I admire your strong feelings about this. You and I probably share many of the same opinions about the Times.

I hope they'll do a column on the Times reporting of war, terrorism, national security, etc.

Maybe I see the problem a little different than you. I'd say that problem isn't really a few liars. If they fire their liars, the problem isn't fixed. And I'd say the problem isn't a few stories that are laugh-out-loud stupid -- like the R. W. Apple story about our quagmire in Afghanistan, right before we won a sweeping victory there. (Or like the R. W. Apple story about our quagmire in Iraq, right before we won a sweeping victory there!)

I'd say the problem is a culture that too critical or snide about the military and military values, week after week for decades. The best recent example I'd cite is National Guard at War at Home to Prepare for Real Thing in Iraq by R. W. Worth. There are no obvious lies. But the tone is clearly hostile to what these good men are doing -- it makes them sound fragile and incompetent. That's not right.

If you have any reaction, I'd be interested.

(And while I hate to intrude into a good rant about the Times, I only think it's fair to note that not all stories are bad. On Christmas day they had a beautiful story about the sacrifices of the military -- focusing on wives of soldiers deployed with the 4th Infantry. Recently they had a good, factual, non-critical story about a platoon from the Stryker brigade.)

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