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 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