Ankush writes:
I was rather surprised to learn, for instance, that TNR's fact-checkers don't check quotes with subjects; they just check quotes against the writers' notes, which strikes me as less than optimal, particularly given that Stephen Glass fabricated notes to deceive the checkers.
This is the practice at most places. Here's why: Quite often, a subject will ramble on in an interview and say something they didn't quite mean to say. These are, generally, the quotes most worth using. But if read back, the subject will deny it, or argue over context, or generally try to edit out whatever bit of illumination they actually let slip. So you don't give them the second edit.
What's important isn't so much checking quotes with subjects as checking the existence of subjects. What Glass did, if I remember correctly, is make up individuals he interviewed. That's useful, as they don't read the article and write a furious letter to the editor. Misquoting real people, by contrast, has rather swift consequences. They tend, for one thing, to not appreciate it.
It's worth saying that these systems actually work pretty well. Their haven't been many serial liars in magazines over the past few decades, which is why everyone knows the name Stephen Glass. As I tried to argue the other day, the real action in contemporary mendacity is going on in the category of bullshit argumentation, rather than concocted reporting.
