skippy the bush kangaroo

Thursday, January 05, 2006

when words lose their meaning

blogtopia (y!sctp!)’s agog with the great nbc/msnbc transcript story. americablog noted that the nbc transcript of andrea mitchell’s interview with james risen (one of the nyt reporters who broke the nsa warrentless spying on american citizens story) contained mitchell’s question to risen which betrayed belief or knowledge that the nsa had tapped cnn journalist christiane amanpour. in a later msbnc posting of the transcript, mitchell’s question was deleted. tpm quotes nbc’s subsequent explanation:

unfortunately this transcript was released prematurely. it was a topic on which we had not completed our reporting, and it was not broadcast on 'nbc nightly news' nor on any other nbc news program. we removed that section of the transcript so that we may further continue our inquiry.

we leave the speculation about his awol-ness’ efforts to spy on american journalists and the extraordinary incompetence of ms. mitchell to the big time famous bloggers and simply note that nbc needs to stop using the word “transcript.” the word surely connotes the copying of content from one medium, say live television, to another, say the printed page. post-facto removal of some of the content provided in the first medium, means that what is offered in the second is partial, perhaps inaccurate, perhaps misleading, and certainly incomplete.

nbc should start entitling the written renditions of their live shows, “some, but not necessarily all of what we said today.” main stream media – like journalism, but without the standards.

posted by Pudentilla at 6:37 AM |