When you quote someone for an article, do you need to clarify how the quote got to you? I see journalists writing attributions such as, “so-and-so said via email” or “according to his personal statement on the website.”

I posed this question to the world’s best team of journalism professors: Roy Moses, Keith Shelton and Dr. Richard Wells from my alma matter, the University of North Texas.

From Roy Moses (via email):

A good reporter wants his story (or hers) to be accurate and wants readers to have faith in their accuracy. Probably nothing surpasses the accuracy of a good reporter (note emphasis on the word good) taking notes from a one-on-one interview. All else — especially anything via the internet — can, and should, be suspect. …Too, a reporter wants readers to know he made a faithful effort to get first-person attribution, but for whatever reasons, he couldn’t. So, this is a sort of cop-out, in a way, or a CYA move as a last straw.

Dr. Wells agreed, also via email:

I believe that the readers have a right to know where info came from. There’s much difference in an interview done by the reporter/writer and other methods. Each has its nuance, and those nuances are not lost on the readers. Readers have some understanding, for instance, of the lack of truth found on the Internet. Also, readers understand that reporters can catch much from body language and facial expressions in person that are not the same via phone and e-mail. Reporters can, when detecting such subtleties, go off in different directions, for instance.

A third email from Keith Shelton noted that saying where you got the info is a good CYA.

I don’t think an accurate quote needs attribution that identifies how you got the quote. However, saying you received it by e-mail is somewhat of a cover in case it turns out not to have been from the source quoted. So I can see how you might justify using that. I see no need to say you got it by phone. That’s like saying telephone-assisted reporting in regard to computer-assisted reporting.

One of my favorite parts of my job as a freelance copywriter is writing articles for company newsletters, press releases, magazines, etc. I am in the process of writing an article about how people use wikis, and I just bid on a project to take a concept about wireless technology and create an article for the general public.

The funny thing about their responses is that they talk about the responsibility of a good journalist. These days, I am a writer with an Agenda. When I write an article for a client, it’s clearly to make the client look good somehow. I’m quite embarrassed about how far away I am from being a responsible, objective reporter who seeks out the truth and plays by the rules to get the story. I carefully choose my sources, artfully leave out or minimize opposing views, write quotes from the CEO of a company without ever having talked to her.

The good news is that in my quest to try to start leaving the house more often, I’m trying to pick up some stringer writing gigs for the San Diego Union-Tribune. And then I can practice being a good journalist again.