Palin Speech Case Study

The ease with which any given human reporter can objectively cover a story fits on a scale from "piece of cake," such as a bit about the weather, to "teeth-grinding tough" like one about a White Supremacist rally on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Many times, speeches fall closer to the latter because by their nature they are meant to impart something new, important or controversial, and depending on the speaker and the purpose of the speech, they are often open to interpretation. In some ways, speeches are an easy write. After all, you just put down what the speaker said and leave it up to the reader to decide how to feel about it.

But especially with politicians, bias often appears in deciding which parts of the speech the reporter chooses to highlight, and what other details about the event he or she finds appropriate to include. A common practice of political mudslinging is to take a quote out of context and infuse it with some sort of alternate meaning that serves the opposition's agenda. Journalists are guilty of contributing to that, too, which is why editors serve as balance checkers. They can help eliminate biases, keep quotes in context and fact check background information.

Grammatically, editors make sure tenses don't confuse meaning. Present becomes past and future becomes conditional. The editor has to make sure he or she doesn't change around the tenses and give something the wrong meaning. In cases where the editor takes the transcript and makes a story out of it, the responsibility is slightly greater because it's about an even the editor didn't attend. He or she is forced to stick to the information and not try to make it an event story.

In the Palin speech, the editor had to make sure the reporter got to the meat of the story, which was that Palin was resigning. Most of the speech included a repertoire of her administration's accomplishments, which is another potential trap, but the editor had to make sure the story stuck to the point. Every politician has an agenda to serve, so the editor also had to know some background about Sarah Palin, including the fact that many expect her to run for president in 2012, which was relevant to the speech and should have been mentioned for context without presuming that was why she resigned. The editor also made it slightly more palatable to readers who might not know very much about politics or about Sarah Palin. Also, AP Style and grammar were checked, of course.

I think the editor made it better, which is no surprise because it usually doesn't hurt to have your work checked, especially if there's the chance for bias and misreported speech.