If you're going to cite someone, do so properly!
quotation marks, by Terry Freedman
One of my rules is that when I see a quote from a report, say, or a news item, I don’t re-quote it until I’ve read the original document from which the excerpt was taken. The reason for this is quite simple: if someone has misquoted, either through poor listening or reading, or for more sinister reasons, I don’t want to be an unwitting collaborator in their propagation of fake news.
I’ve come across lots of instances of this — one of them just a week or so ago — but I’ll just relate three of them.
Example 1: A research report’s press release
Some years ago a well-known body published a report based on its research into education technology in schools. It publicised the report through a press release with a headline along the lines of: “Schools waste £450bn a year on useless technology”.
However, when you read the report itself, it said nothing of the kind. What it did say was that schools were spending £450bn a year on technology, but were not getting as much out of it as they could because of a lack of training in how to use it.
Apart from the fact that the press release didn’t accurately represent the contents of the report, it led one to infer that the researchers themselves had come up with that finding. It made the report sound like yet another exercise in school-bashing, which I sometimes think has become a national sport in the UK.
Example 2: A misheard presentation
A few years ago I gave a presentation on how newspapers often misreport educational research. After quoting one example of research, I said, “Now, you might think that because of the low numbers involved, this research isn’t worth the paper it’s written on, but you’d be wrong, for the following reasons…”
Someone came up to me afterwards and complained that I’d said the research wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. I’d actually said the precise opposite!
Example 3: Cherry-picking
This is the recent example I mentioned. Someone tweeted an extract from a newspaper article, saying it was a new low in journalism. The quote was something along the lines of “So, President Macron has coronavirus. This is the law of karma at work. This is his come-uppance.”
Pretty nasty, as I’m sure you’d agree. However, the very next sentence after this was: “No doubt many people will be thinking along such lines.”, and the article itself ended with the writer wishing Macron well.
Conclusions
This kind of shoddy listening, reporting or quoting has a number of potential consequences:
It spreads fake news, mistrust and negativity.
There have been circumstances in which fake news has had fatal consequences, so why would anyone wish to propagate it?
I can imagine a situation in which someone believing a quote to be accurate acts upon it, with the result that someone could have their career ruined.
It prevents people from writing creatively. For example, I would love to quote something from a satirical article I wrote some years ago, but I’m worried that someone will quote from it out of context, and lead to some horrible consequences for me. Less importantly, perhaps, it could constrict the way people write. For instance, putting those negative sentiments about Macron first rather than starting with “Some people might say…” has led to a journalist being criticised unjustifiably.
It causes extra work for the rest of us. I would love to be to take everything on trust, but I daren’t.
For a list of useful resources and articles about fake news, see: