Saturday, August 11, 2007

Another Low Point for Print Journalism

According to the Washington Post Ombudsman, Deb Howell, the sports section routinely edits peoples' quotes to make them grammatically correct. This is in violation of the paper's policy. This came to light when the exact same quote was used by a Post reporter in a story and one in a column. The Post changed the quote to make it proper in the story, the columnist did not. Then to make it worse, when the column was published on Washingtonpost.com, the changed the quote to match that in the story. The writer of the story is unrepentant, claiming that he often cleans up the language of minority athletes as he is conscious of "about the differences in class, background and race -- I'm an African American". He also then goes on to say, indirectly, that white southerners are just as stupid, and with their quotes "reporters instinctively clean up their language."

So much for being unbiased.

Edited to fix a spelling error and quote

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