New York Times Prints Truncated Version Of Hillary MLK Quote Yet Again
January 13, 2008 -- 7:52 AM EST // //
Updated below.
I'm not letting go of this one -- sorry. The New York Times has -- for the third time, now -- printed a truncated version of Hillary's controversial quote about Martin Luther King in a piece running in Sunday's paper.
Adding to the absurdity, this time the paper did it in an article that was about whether her words had been distorted. Seriously. The piece is entitled, "Clinton Accuses Obama Camp of Distorting Her Words."
Presumably an article about this subject would contain Hillary's actual quote, to allow readers to make up their own minds about what she meant. But this is how The Times's Adam Nagourney and Patrick Healy characterize the comments:
This was what Mrs. Clinton said on Monday: “Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to get it done.” At a later stop, she said that her remark had not captured what she had sought to portray.Actually, this isn't what Mrs. Clinton said on Monday, which is pretty bizarre, considering that The Times began that paragraph with, "this is what Mrs. Clinton said on Monday." The full quote -- what Hillary really said -- is right here.
I'm going to try to say this as clearly as I can. Even if you think the edited version of the quote isn't a distortion of the original in any way, that still doesn't mean you don't have an obligation to share the original quote with readers.
The other day, Josh explained on TPM why he thinks the shortened quote is a distortion. I think it's clear that while Hillary's comments were inartful and she herself walked them back later, the truncated version does change the tone, if not the substance, of the original, making it sound more condescending to King and hence more controversial. We've heard from lots of Times readers who agree.
Again -- the question of whether the shortened version constitutes a distortion is a very, very close call. Reasonable people can disagree over it. And I understand that reporters edit quotes for space and so forth.
But precisely because there's disagreement over it, readers are better served by the full quote. In this case, there's simply no good reason not to publish it.
Indeed, Healy himself used the full quote on The Times's political blog, in a Friday item co-written with Carl Hulse. Why can't Times reporters agree on a fact as basic and as consequential as this one? One version is factually accurate; the other falls short. This may be the most controversial quote of the campaign. So why not err on the side of 100 percent accuracy and print the whole thing? Not sure what the downside is.
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Update: Underscoring yet again why this is important, Tim Russert just read the truncated version of the quote on Meet the Press -- and he read it from one of the Times accounts. So I'm going to try to make this case one more time:
People keep saying that there's no need to publish the full quote because its meaning is the same as the truncated one.
But here's the point: Not everyone agrees with this. There's argument on this point.
Because of this fact -- that there's argument about this -- reporters should publish the full quote.
When it comes to issues of race, every single nuance matters enormously. This is incredibly sensitive. It could impact the presidential race. As a result, readers are better served if they are given every single nuance -- they are better served if they are told precisely what Hillary said, not given an edited version of it.
What's more, there is no harm in publishing the full quote. There's no reason not to do it. The Times is letting its readers down by not doing it. That's all there is to it.
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