Translate the words from the table if necessary.

Read the text and answer the following questions:

1. What advice can be given to a journalist, who doubts whether to use a quote or not?

2. What was Janet Malcolm sued for? How did the legal case end?

3. What are the 6 criteria for using a quote in your story?

4. What quotes should be avoided?

5. What information is not considered as plagiarism?

When you prepare to write a story, you gather a lot of material. But the problem is that you won’t need all of this information. Then how do you know, which part of this information should be used as a quote, which should be paraphrased and which should be just omitted? Here are some tips to guide you:

Ask yourself: is the quote memorable without referring to your notes? If so, it’s probably a good quote.

Does your quote repeat your transitions? Could the quote or the transition be eliminated?

If you don’t attribute the statement to a source, are you sure it is a fact that can be substantiated by records or officials or that is common knowledge?

Can you state the information in your own words? If so, paraphrase.

Does the quote advance the story by adding emotion, interest or new information?

Are you including the quote for your source or for your readers? That is the most important question of all. The readers’ interests always take priority.

Jeffrey Masson, a psychoanalyst who gained fame for his critical views of Sigmund Freud, said journalist Janet Malcolm fabricated quotes that she attributed to him in a profile she wrote about him in The New Yorker magazine. He sued her for libel. Malcolm, who reconstructed one quote from memory and condensed others, insisted that she followed a common journalistic practice. At issue in the landmark case was whether journalists could slightly change the wording in quotes without legal repercussions.

Although it is common practice to clean up quotes for grammar, major changes in wording are not acceptable. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled in 1991 that altering a quote for grammar and syntax is not grounds for libel unless the changes alter the meaning and make the statement false. Libel is defined as a false and a defamatory written attack on a person’s character. By its ruling the Supreme Court upheld previous legal standards for libel and refused to create a new libel category for quotations. It also sent the case back to a lower court for a decision on whether those quotes were libelous. In 1994 a federal court in California ruled that even though some of the disputed quotes were false, they were not libelous, because Malcolm didn’t knowingly write them with “reckless disregard” for the truth.

The upshot is that minor grammatical changes in quotes are OK if the quotes accurately reflect what the source said. The quotation marks are a signal to the reader that those are the source’s words, not an interpreted version. If a quote has to be substantially changed to correct its grammar, paraphrase it and attribute it to the source without quotation marks.

Good quotes can back up your lead and substantiate information in your story. In addition, good quotes let the reader hear the speaker. They add drama and interest to your story. But boring quotes can bog down stories. If they repeat what you’ve already said, it’s better to paraphrase or to eliminate the quotes altogether.

A good quote is the one that is vivid and clear and that reveals strong feelings and reactions of the speaker. Here are some guidelines for deciding when to use quotes:

· When the quote is interesting and informative.

· To back up the lead, the nut graph or a supporting point in your story.

· To reveal the source’s opinion or feelings.

· To express strong reactions from a source.

· To convey dramatic action.

· When you use first-person singular or plural pronouns (I, we, us) in a source’s comments. If you paraphrase, use she, he or they.

Here are some types of quotes to avoid:

· Avoid direct quotes when the source is boring or the information is factual and indisputable.

· Avoid any direct quote that isn’t really worded. If a government official says something in bureaucratic language that you don’t fully understand, ask for clarification and then paraphrase.

· Avoid quotes that don’t relate directly to the focus and supporting points in your story. Some of the best quotes your source says may have nothing to do with your focus. It’s better to lose them than to use them poorly.

· Avoid accusatory quotes from politicians or witnesses of a crime. If you intend to include any accusations, get a response from a person accused. A direct quote does not save you from libel. If police or other criminal justice officials make accusations in an official capacity, you may use direct or indirect quotes, providing you attribute them carefully.

When to use attribution?

All quotes must be attributed to a speaker. In addition, you need to attribute information you paraphrase.

Copying the words of other writers is plagiarism. Because the Internet and electronic databases allow ready access to many newspapers, plagiarism is easier than ever. Even if you paraphrase information you receive from other publications, you are plagiarizing if you don’t attribute it. So if you take information from a written publication, make sure you attributeit to that source. When all the information you gather is from your own sources, you still need to tell the reader where you got the material. However, you don’t need to attribute everything. Here are some guidelines:

· You don’t need to attribute facts that are on record or are general knowledge:

The trial will resume tomorrow.

· You don’t need to attribute information that you observe directly:

The protesters, carrying signs and chanting songs, gathered in the park.

· You don’t need to attribute background information established in previous stories about the same subject:

The defendant is accused of killing three people whose bodies have never been found.

· You do not need to attribute information you receive from sources if it is accusatory, opinionated and not substantiated and if you did not witness it – especially in crime and accident stories. However, you don’t always have to attribute everything in the lead:

A 2-year-old girl escaped injury when a mattress she was sitting on caught fire and engulfed the studio apartment at Wheatshocker Apartments in flames.