David Wallace and Costa Bajjali spent considerable time in the Globe’s conference room this past week answering questions — many of them submitted by our readers — about a master development plan proposal that has been accepted by the Joplin City Council.

In a nutshell, the proposal is a list of projects that are being considered in the wake of the May 22, 2011, tornado. The public will get to weigh in on each of them, and the city council will have to sign off. The outcome of the discussion with Wallace Bajjali Development Partners, of Sugar Land, Texas, is featured on today’s Globe Forum page.

During the course of the interview, I used methods most journalists use: I took notes on a notepad. For backup, I recorded the session, just in case something in my notes was unclear.

The two men then left the Globe building. Today — just as it is for all of our readers — will be the first time they will see the articles or their quotes.

It’s the way we work here in the Globe newsroom. Reporters’ work prior to publication is confidential. Sources for the story do not get to OK or pre-read a story.

Certainly, we may conduct follow-up interviews on points that we think leave questions. Or if we are concerned that a quote is inaccurate, we may call the source of the quote and re-ask the question just to make sure the story is clear.

I always thought that was the drill for all journalists. That was until a few weeks ago when I read an article in The New York Times that I found disturbing. While it was all the talk in news-type circles, you may not have caught the story.

“The quotations come back redacted, stripped of colorful metaphors, colloquial language and anything even mildly provocative.

“They are sent by email from the Obama headquarters in Chicago to reporters who have interviews with campaign officials under one major condition: The press office has veto power over what statements can be quoted and attributed by name.”

The story later moves to the Mitt Romney camp.

“The Romney campaign insists that journalists interviewing any of Mitt Romney’s five sons agree to use only quotations that are approved by the press office. And Romney advisers almost always require that reporters ask them for the green light on anything from a conversation that they would like to include in an article,” according to the Times article.

“From Capitol Hill to the Treasury Department, interviews granted only with quote approval have become the default position,” the article read.

Say what?

Lots of things go on in newsrooms that I don’t always agree with, but this particular collapse needs to stop.

Reporters who are caving to these demands say they do so because it’s the only way they can get the quotes they deem so necessary.

The July 15 Times story, written by Jeremy Peters, reports that the Times, The Washington Post, Reuters, Bloomberg and Vanity Fair are all yielding to demands of Barack Obama’s administration and the Obama and Romney campaigns that allow officials to, in effect, censure and sanitize their own quotations.

The Associated Press, the news service to which the Globe subscribes, has steadfastly refused to make any quote-clearing concessions as ground rules for interviews with officials.

“It has been our standard all along,” AP senior managing editor Michael Oreskes said. “... We’d rather not use the quote at all if the price of the quote is that we have to doctor it.”

Oreskes’ philosophy is one we follow here at the Globe. Occasionally, you will see a quote that may have been emailed to us. The story should note it was an email response. We do not like to conduct email interviews. Recently our crime reporter, Jeff Lehr, spoke with someone at the state’s Division of Family Services. He had a question about a case. She told him to email his questions, but he told her that he needed to speak with a real person. Consequently, we didn’t get the information we needed. Apparently a real-life person wasn’t available that day.

“Quote approval,” as it’s being called, is not journalism. It’s a press release. Journalists and the news services they work for should walk away empty-handed rather than acquiesce to these types of demands.

After all, if no one agreed to use doctored quotes, sooner or later the candidates would have to talk to reporters the way they should.

On the record.



Carol Stark is editor of The Joplin Globe. Address correspondence to her, c/o The Joplin Globe, P.O. Box 7, Joplin, MO 64802 or email cstark@joplinglobe.com. Follow Carol Stark on Twitter @carolstark30.