You’ll find hundreds of quotes in an average issue of The Western Producer. Accurate quotes are integral to good reporting.
Most reporters tape interviews to ensure the accuracy of the quotes they include in their stories. It’s a protection for sources, so they know their words are rendered accurately. It’s a service to readers, so they know that quotes they read are exactly what was said. And it’s a protection for the reporter, who doesn’t have to rely on memory to ensure exact wording and context.
The quotes in newspaper pages mostly consist of explanations and reactions from people with some knowledge of the subject at hand. As such, most won’t be included within compilations of famous quotations.
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As the selector of the quotation that appears weekly on page 6 (with the exception of this week), this editor is constantly seeking bon mots that can entertain, inform or challenge readers. And it doesn’t hurt if they have some connection or provide another context to that week’s editorial.
Thus I read with some trepidation about the recent publication of two books that call into question the sources of various well-known
quotations.
In The Quote Verifier by former American journalist Ralph Keyes, the author says roughly two-thirds of the 450 sayings he researched were either misworded or misattributed.
For example, “show me the money,” attributed to Tom Cruise’s character in the movie Jerry Maguire, was instead first spoken by at least two early 20th century boxers.
Ever heard the one about how the duty of a good newspaper is “to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted”? Though attributed to several people, it likely has its roots with a philosophizing, anonymous bartender, says the book.
The second book, The Yale Book of Quotations, by Fred R. Shapiro, opens up an even greater maw of likely misquotations. Said Arthur Spiegelman, in a Reuters story about the book’s quotations, “sometimes they are never said at all but are, instead, little fictions that have forged their way
into public consciousness.”
Examples? How about “there’s a sucker born every minute.” Shapiro contends that P.T. Barnum never spoke those words, though he may have said something along the same line.
Sigmund Freud never said “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar” and Mae West never said “is that a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?” So says Shapiro’s research.
It’s enough to make us extra careful about the rendering of quotes. Technology helps. So does integrity. By employing them both, we expect to avoid inaccuracies the likes of which Yogi Berra commented upon in one of his famous quotes: “I didn’t really say everything I said.”
