The actress was in Israel this week causing all kinds of media flurry. We don't get that many US celebrities passing through, and the media here are just crazy for them.
Stone's appearance provides an opportunity to discuss the role of accuracy in the written media in the age of video. A segment of Stone's press conference was preserved by Ynetnews. Just underneath the video box, you could read her quotes as transcribed by the reporter. Well, the two didn't match.
I remember reading sports articles and columns in the New York Post in the old days, checking back and forth when the same ballplayer was quoted twice. I was puzzled then about why the quotes, as transcribed by reporters, didn't always match. Then I did the same thing myself when I was a working reporter. My notes didn't always (rarely, in fact) matched my tape recordings.
Reporting is an inherently challenging business -- and, given the credibility challenges the media face today, one in which accuracy would seem to be both rare and even more valuable than in the past.
When viewers/readers of Web sites can see the "original" and "raw" video and then the "processed" and "filtered" work next to it, and the two don't match, then oy va voy (as we say here) for our credibility.
