The Associated Press' reporter Mark Smith is defending the way he transcribed President Barack Obama's speech at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's annual award dinner on Saturday. Yet, many beleive racism played a role in his transcript of the speech.
Smith dropped G's in the transcript, quoting Obama as saying the words "complainin", "grumblin" and "cryin". This action has many people angry with Smith's decision. Author Karen Hunter called the AP's decision to do this "inherently racist".
It's very hard to decipher whether this is actually racist, becasue Obama did appear to be speaking in the fashion Smith depicted in the transcript. Yet, it does raise some flags in the world of ethics.
It is common for journalists to clean up quotes and fix such sayings that Smith did not. Fixing those mistakes is not lying nor is not being accurate - it's just journalistic practice. It is okay to clean up quotes as long as it does not disrupt or alter the speaker's message. So, when Smith decides to suddenly ignore that practice, it does create certain issues with ethics that would allow someone to say racism played a role.
Smith needs to be consistent with the way he transcribes. He can't clean up other quotes to follow journalistic practice, and then decide that this speech should not be cleaned up. That lacks consistency and makes his thought process questionable when he transcribes in a different manner for different sources.
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