Am I missing some important ethical constraint here that is properly seen as binding on speakers or interviewees?

Not really. To generalize a bit, journalists hate it when sources want to see what they’ve written. Of course, these are the same journalists who are in the position to editorialize incidents as “messy,” or the like, in print. It’s not an important ethical constraint; more like an observable coincidence.

Related: Good journalists recognize their ethical duty to treat sources as human beings deserving of respect. So long as the request to check quotes is made reasonably and doesn’t bump up against a deadline, more journalists should do it as a matter of courtesy.

That must be why so few imitate Donald Rumsfeld by publishing the full text of every public statement or interview on their website.

We don’t question that a model or celebrity has the right to put conditions on the use and publication of studio photos of them, and the appropriate of signing releases in some cases, but that snapshots of them in public don’t have the same protection.

Why would words that someone is specifically contracting with you to record (as opposed to those that happen in public) be any different?

As people have said, the journalist has the right to refuse the conditions, too.

I sent it back immediately, in plenty of time to make corrections, thanking her and politely correcting a factual error.

This is why, were I to write such an article, I would ask the subject to review it – to make sure I hadn’t misunderstood and therefore misreported something.

They printed the piece as it was originally (and incorrectly) written.

Why am I not surprised.

It appears to me this is messy because Kennedy authored an opinion which had the effect of denying that interviewees had the right to insist on being quoted accurately. The same Kennedy then insisted on editing a newspaper story so that he could be quoted accurately.

Of course that’s his side of the story — we don’t know whether he was merely correcting an inaccurate quote, “eliminat[ing] grammatical and syntactical infelicities”, or changing an accurate quote into something he liked more.

“Sauce for the goose …”, methinks.

I am not in any danger of being quoted by newspapers, but if I were I would have my own voice recorder running at all times during interviews, and I’d attempt an agreement like Professor Volokh’s.

I was interviewed for a puff piece about my volunteer work a number of years ago. The author sent me a copy of the piece that was to run and asked me if she’d gotten everything right. (No, I didn’t ask for it – I was more stupid trusting back in those days.)

I sent it back immediately, in plenty of time to make corrections, thanking her and politely correcting a factual error. They printed the piece as it was originally (and incorrectly) written.

I’ve never trusted newspapers since. Never will.

Kirk Parker:
Really?So why haven’t we heard about this?

I guess you don’t listen very carefully. Just one random sample, from the (former) Newspaper of Record:

http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=NWRiZTdhYTA4MmFkYWJkYjliZDA5OWFiMTU0YmU5YTg=

On Friday, I had the rare honor of appearing in the pages of the New York Times, apropos President Obama’s plans to beam himself into every schoolhouse in the land in the peculiar belief that Generation iPod will find this an enthralling technical novelty. As Times reporters James C. McKinley Jr. and Sam Dillon wrote: “Mark Steyn, a Canadian author and political commentator, speaking on the Rush Limbaugh show on Wednesday, accused Mr. Obama of trying to create a cult of personality, comparing him to Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il, the North Korean leader.”

Oh, dear! “A Canadian author”: Talk about damning with faint credentialization. I don’t know what’s crueler, the “Canadian” or the indefinite article. As to the rest of it, well, that’s one way of putting it. Here’s what I said on Wednesday re dear old Saddam and Kim: “Obviously we’re not talking about the cult of personality on the Saddam Hussein/Kim Jong-Il scale.”

Close enough for Times work.

11.Kirk Parker says:

Misquotations by reporters are commonplace

Really? So why haven’t we heard about this?

Who would report on them?

“… for four percent raises each year for four years, for a total of about a 17 percent raise over the course of the contract.” — Approximately what I once wrote for the newspaper.

“… for a total of a 16 percent raise,” — What appeared in the paper.

“Four times four is sixteen.” — Editor

Your editor never heard of compund interest?

John R. Mayne: “… for four percent raises each year for four years, for a total of about a 17 percent raise over the course of the contract.” — Approximately what I once wrote for the newspaper.
“… for a total of a 16 percent raise,” — What appeared in the paper.
“Four times four is sixteen.” — Editor

Actually you were right and your editor (and ultimately the newspaper) was wrong. Assuming the 4 percent raises were cumulative rather than all based on the original base salary, the ultimate raise over the course of the contract is closer to 17 percent.

Misquotations by reporters are commonplace

Really? So why haven’t we heard about this?

I laugh at the idea of “journalistic ethics”.

Indeed. The Dalton newspaper is a noted liberal rag. Its expose last year on why the lunch ladies refuse to wear hairnets was pure agenda-driven drivel from the left wing MSM.

I laugh at the idea of “journalistic ethics”.

Thales’ analysis strikes me as sound. It seems to me that one good way to avoid that on complicated issues, or any issue involving numbers – where journalists often go wrong – is to ask to review quotes without having veto power.

In some situations, that won’t be good enough from one side or the other; some news purveyors are sufficiently unreliable that it won’t be satisfactory, and some purveyors won’t want to have their sources pre-screen things due to time or perception-of-bias considerations.

But it seems like one way to diminish the ethical concerns that come with the request.

–JRM

“… for four percent raises each year for four years, for a total of about a 17 percent raise over the course of the contract.” – Approximately what I once wrote for the newspaper.

“… for a total of a 16 percent raise,” – What appeared in the paper.

“Four times four is sixteen.” – Editor

1) Does giving the interviewee the final say over the authoritative quotation or condensation of his remarks traipse into allowing the interviewee to edit out things he did on a fair listen say, but later wishes he hadn’t, hence impugning the goal of accuracy?

2) When it comes to government officials, even if speaking in a private capacity, does agreeing to such conditions amount to a form of pre-clearance of the official version of events, a sort of collusion or close intimacy between state and press that is best avoided (vide Judith Miller) in the interests of a kind of professional, detached reporting?

I understand EV’s and others’ concerns about being misquoted or screwed over by sloppy journalists, of course. I’d think this would be one good reason to allow mutual consent to an audio or video recording of interviews, even if it will only be used to establish the record for print media.

I don’t see [...] why Justice Kennedy’s view should be seen as hypocritical, ironic, or inconsistent. Justice Kennedy has generally voted against government curbs on free speech; but it seems to me that a speaker acting as a private individual — which Justices do when they give speeches, as opposed to rendering opinions — is entitled to condition his speaking…

That’s a bit disingenuous. He may have been technically acting as a private citizen, but he would less likely to even get those teaching and speaking gigs at all, let alone have reporters willing to strike sweetheart deals with him, if he were, say, Anthony Kennedy, retired partner Covington & Burling, instead of Anthony Kennedy, man who could make abortion illegal. He derives his living and his authority entirely from his Constitutional role and even if he, again technically, isn’t restrained by the Constitution, I think it would be seemly if he acted as if he were (as indeed, he claims to be doing).

… on checking the quotations to make sure they are accurate. Misquotations by reporters are commonplace, and it seems quite reasonable for a speaker to try to prevent such misquotations.

Having a practical, sensible reason makes the situation worse.

If he were to say, “I won’t let them cover me if they are going to make me look bad, because I’m vain and autocratic,” we could say, “Well, he’s technically acting as a private citizen; good thing public officials cannot act that way ex officio.”

But Eugene’s argument would apply distressingly well to a public official, say a FBI director, who refused to grant interviews in his office without a review condition, claiming that the need to insure accuracy outweighs the prior restraint concerns. Certainly, if Kennedy himself were to make that argument, we would surely see it thrown back at him in the next prior-restraint case to come before the Court.

Indeed, is it impossible that some future litigant might really say in oral arguments, “Well, Justice Kennedy, when you yourself were accused of imposing prior restraint, the well-regarded Constitutional scholar Eugene Volokh wrote in his blog, ‘Misquotations by reporters are commonplace, and it seems quite reasonable…’”?

In my former (short) life as a journalist, I would happily send a source the actual text of any quotes if requested. I would not send the entire article, except to provide notice of what was going to be published. If a source would not agree to those rules, I generally found a host of other willing sources who would.

Also, I am definitely adding “infelicities” to my active vocabulary.