CHAPTER VI
SPEECHES, INTERVIEWS, AND TRIALS
Various Forms of Utterances. As news stories of
speeches, sermons, lectures, official reports, and interviews,
as well as of testimony, decisions, and arguments
in trials and investigations, are concerned largely with
direct or indirect quotation of written or spoken expression,
the writing of them involves several elements
that do not enter into the composition of the typical
news story. In the types of news thus far considered,
such as fires, accidents, and crime, the story was a narrative
of what had happened. Although the facts were
gleaned largely from observation and interviews, usually
no person's ideas or opinions were quoted. News stories
of addresses, reports, or similar documents, interviews
and court trials, on the other hand, have only a small
incidental narrative-descriptive element to present the
circumstances under which the utterance was made.
The large and important part of such stories consists
of a reproduction in complete or condensed form of the
original expression.
Verbatim Quotation. Direct verbatim quotations of all utterances are generally preferred for news stories because they are exact reproductions of the originals. Whenever a copy of any of these forms of expression can be obtained, it is desirable for the reporter to get one either before or after the utterance is made, because of the accuracy of the quotation which a copy makes possible. Frequently copies of addresses, lectures, sermons, reports, decisions, and testimony can
