Posted by Eugene Volokh:
Who Are You Going To Believe -- The Transcript or Your Lying Ears?
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_07_23-2006_07_29.shtml#1154019084
Here's [1]Yesterday's Bushism at Slate:
"And the question is, are we going to be facile enough to change
with�will we be nimble enough; will we be able to deal with the
circumstances on the ground? And the answer is, yes, we
will."�Washington, D.C., July 25, 2006
To Slate's credit, they point to [2]the video of Bush's comments
(referring to the material starting at 17:44). I followed the video
and noticed that the transcript was incorrect; here's what I wrote to
Slate (apologies for the typo in the parenthetical):
Today's column says, [quote omitted] .... Fortunately, it includes
a link to the video.
I followed that link, and it turns out the transcription is
mistaken. President Bush says:
"And the question is, are we going to be facile enough to change
with the c�will we be nimble enough; will we be able to deal with
the circumstances on the ground? And the answer is, yes, we
will."�Washington, D.C., July 25, 2006.
I understand that you folks might still want to fault Bush for
having cut off the word "conditions" (assuming this wasn't just a
technical glitch (note that the audio might have some skips, see
18:10-18:16). But at least the transcript ought to be corrected, I
think.
To my surprise, here's the message I got back from Slate:
Geoff (Jacob's Bushism researcher) followed up on this, and here's
what he has to say.
Bush makes an audible, vague "c" sound in the video, very briefly.
But he often makes a lot of sounds that don't end up in the White
House transcript. Plenty of "uhs" and "ums" and sometimes real
starts and stops to words or thoughts. And part of what the White
House does to indicate that he's changing gear abruptly is they use
those em dashes between disjointed points. We print their version
faithfully and I think we have to. I'm glad we run video so that
people can see how these things are actually delivered.
Bush's comment was widely quoted in the form in which it appeared
in the White House release. I don't think Volokh would find it fair
if we got into the business of "correcting" the White House
transcript in this way.
This struck me as pretty remarkable: The video conclusively proves the
transcript to be mistaken; whatever one may say about the "c" (and it
seems to me clearly audible enough to be included), the transcript
clearly omits the word "the." Yet Slate insists on continuing to cite
the transcript, which is what I suspect 95+% of its readers will rely
on) even though it's wrong.
I don't see how that could be proper. Even if Slate feels
uncomfortable departing from the White House transcript -- odd, given
that it's quite entitled to transcribe the video yourself -- surely
there'd be nothing wrong with noting that the transcript was mistaken.
And it seems to me quite wrong to continue to use a transcript that
one now knows to be in error.
Naturally, one could conclude that even the corrected version somehow
shows a risible error on President Bush's part (assuming there's no
video skip); I've never found such slips in extemporaneous speech to
be particularly telling, but others may disagree. Still, I'd think a
basic rule of journalism would be: When you give a transcript, give an
accurate transcript, and if you learn that it's wrong (by comparing it
with an actual live recording), correct it, even if you think that the
error in the transcript is immaterial. That apparently is not Slate's
view, though.
References
1. http://www.slate.com/id/2146536/
2. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/07/20060725.v.smil
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