African American

I thought that court reporting is verbatim transcription. I understand errors such as transcribing "been" as "Ben", but paraphrasing what someone said in court is not only unprofessional but insane. I thought maybe reporters are allowed to do this but found that there is a code of ethics for them that goes, "The National Court Reporters Association (NCRA) has assembled a Code of Professional Ethics by which court reporters who belong to the association are expected to abide. The very first section of the code states, The Court Reporter is the official reporter/officer creating the verbatim record of a proceeding. In making the official record, a Member should accept only those assignments when the Member’s level of competence will result in the preparation of an accurate transcript. The Member should remove him or herself from an assignment when the Member believes the Member’s abilities are inadequate, recommending or assigning another reporter only if that reporter has the qualifications required for such assignment.” From a good article at https://skreporting.com/is-your-court-reporter-providing-a-verbatim-transcript/

The NYT link to the original article is also very good. It answered my question as how it's possible for AA reporters to make roughly the same amount of errors. First, they're only 26% of the 27 reporters. Second, "Philadelphia court protocols instruct transcriptionists to ask for clarity if they have doubts about what they've heard, but many court reporters told researchers they felt discouraged from doing so."

Thanks for posting!