Wednesday, September 25, 2019

Not A Transcript

Journalists regularly do things like "take notes" and also "record conversations and then have them transcribed" and know the difference but it's all so confusing.

President Trump told his Ukrainian counterpart to work with the U.S. attorney general to investigate the conduct of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and offered to meet with the foreign leader at the White House after he promised to conduct such an inquiry, according to a newly-released transcript of the call.

...

The transcript, in keeping with White House practice, is a memorandum of a telephone conversation and is not a verbatim account of the conversation. The text reflects the notes and memories of officials in the Situation Room. A disclaimer in the transcript warns that a number of factors “can affect the accuracy of the record, including poor telecommunications connections and variations in accent.”

The article+headline refers to it 6 times as a transcript before that 12th paragraph.