Investigative Journalism!!!

Where's my award?

Here's an interesting story. It's about the shitty artillery thingie, where that one chick (Meleia Willis-Starbuck) got killed by that one dude (Christopher Lester Hollis) who was trying to kill some other dudes (other dudes) who were arguing with that one chick. Some other dude (Christopher Larry Wilson Jr.) who drove the gun dude to the shooting place plea bargained for a lesser crime in exchange for his testimony. Oh, yeah, and there was some other dude (Gregory Mitchell) napping in the car.

So that's the story. In the paper, if you pick it up, you can see this line:

"That was me," Wilson said Hollis told Mitchell when he returned to Wilson's car. "I just ran them cats off the block."

Now, is "running cats off the block" the kind of vernacular you hear in this century? I don't really know, so if someone could fill me in, that'd be great. The reason I'm pointing this out, though, is because sometimes, The Daily Cal puts articles on its website which are in the middle of the editing process. In this case, at the time I am writing this, you can find the following on the website:

"That was me," Wilson said Hollis told Mitchell when he returned to Wilson's car. "I just ran them cats off the block. (scared them niggers away.")

Hmm. So, explanations? Did the Daily Cal censor a direct quote? Did a Daily Cal staffer inaccurately write down a quote? I know some Daily Cal folk read this, so let's hear some excuses.

Here's what The Chron reports:

Hollis told them, "That was me. Yeah, I just ran those cats off the block. I scared them away," Wilson testified.

There's a misplaced "Yeah," which may have just been left off the quote by The Daily Cal. "I scared them away" corresponds to the parenthetical in The Daily Cal's story, though "niggers" is not present. Note that I'm not suggesting that The Chron is correct, and it's possible that The Chron censored a direct quote as well.

Moving on, here's what AP and The Contra Costa Times report:

Hollis then ran back to the car, got in and told him to drive away, Wilson said. "Chris was like, 'I just scared those dudes away.'"

Uh oh. "Dudes"! And "like"! Well, he may have answered the question twice, so this is probably not a reference to the same quote.

Anyway, did one of the Daily Cal staffers just throw in a gratuitous "niggers" somewhere during the editing process? Or did The Chron make an inaccurate quote?

posted by Beetle Aurora Drake 2/10/2006 11:02:00 AM #
Comments (2)

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Comments:

Of course, unless you get the transcript it's hard to tell whether it was dudes or cats (a term still used frequently). What appears to have happened was that the quotation with the so-called n-word made it through the first two stages of editing (with an assistant, then the news editor) and was passed on to the 3rd and 4th editing phases (a copy editor, then the night editor). The parenthesis around the n-word passage denoted that a copy editor suggested the passage be removed, likely because the word's potential to offend exceed any illuminating value it might have. You might remember the story had several other parenthetical pairs in it before it was fixed around a couple of commas. Again those are suggestions that those marks be removed.
Since it didn't appear in print it's pretty obvious whoever was responsible for putting it online grabbed a not-yet final version and posted it.
**I'm not a Daily Cal staffer. But I am familiar with newspaper production processes. You should just call the paper's editor if you want to know what happened**

# posted by  Anonymous : 7:44 AM, February 11, 2006

 

But I don't care that much. I sort of figured as much about being it being caught in the editing process. I have no real problem with removing offensive but non-illuminating stuff (one could argue that this actually was illuminating, and I would argue that the entire story is not), my concern was that direct quotes are being modified for sensitivity, which seems to eliminate the point of direct quotes.

Do you know if newspapers in general will modify direct quotes and still leave them in quotation marks?

# posted by  Beetle Aurora Drake : 12:15 PM, February 11, 2006

 

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