Reporting and Editing Questions and Answers

Answer: B

'Typo' is short for typographical error.

A typo is a mistake in typing or typesetting: a wrong, missing, swapped or extra letter, such as 'teh' for 'the'. In newsrooms, catching typos is a routine part of copy editing and proofreading before a story is printed or posted.

The word does not mean a typing machine, which is a typewriter, nor printing text in general. 'Typically political' is a play on the sound of the word and has no connection with its meaning.

Answer: C

A source is a person interviewed by the reporter.

In news writing, a source is anyone or anything that gives the reporter information: an eyewitness, an official, an expert or a document. The reporter interviews sources and attributes information and quotations to them, so the reader knows where each fact came from.

The reporter gathers information from sources and is not a source. A news agency supplies finished stories to newspapers, and the newspaper is the publisher; neither is what a 'source' means within a news story.

Answer: A

An ambush interview is an unfair deceptive journalism practise.

In an ambush interview, a reporter, often with a camera crew, confronts a person without warning, for example outside a home or office, and fires questions at someone who has not agreed to be interviewed. It is widely criticised as unfair because the person is caught off guard and the encounter is staged for effect.

It has nothing to do with technical skill in television, BBC internships, or questions about personal finances. The word 'ambush' points to the surprise element that makes it ethically questionable.

Answer: A

Attribution means giving a source audit for a quote, that is, giving credit to the source.

In journalism, attribution tells the reader who supplied a fact, an opinion or a quotation: 'said the Police Commissioner', 'according to the RBI's annual report'. It lets readers judge how reliable the information is and separates the reporter's own account from what others claim.

A description of what a photo shows is a caption (cutline). A reporter's mistake is an error to be corrected, and an accusation is an allegation; neither is attribution, though an accusation is exactly the kind of statement that needs careful attribution.

Answer: B

Soft news is news that is entertaining or interesting.

Hard news covers timely, serious events such as politics, crime, the economy and disasters. Soft news is lighter and less time-bound: human-interest stories, celebrity and lifestyle news, features on unusual people or places. It is read for interest or entertainment rather than because the reader must know it today.

News based on opinions is commentary or editorial, not soft news. Where a story is published, online or on paper, does not make it soft or hard. Advice columns are a feature format of their own, not the definition of soft news.

Answer: B

A direct quotation is The Prime Minister said "we will take India forward".

A direct quotation reproduces the speaker's exact words inside quotation marks, keeping the speaker's own grammatical person: 'we will take India forward'.

The sentence with 'roared' quotes only a fragment and adds a loaded verb, so it is a partial quotation with editorial colour, not a clean direct quote. 'Said he would take India forward' is indirect (reported) speech, with the pronoun and tense changed and no quotation marks. 'It was reported that ...' is also indirect speech, and second-hand as well.

Answer: A

Attribution means telling readers where the information in a news story comes from.

A reporter attributes a fact or quotation by naming its source, as in 'police said' or 'according to the Census report'. Attribution lets readers judge the reliability of the information and makes clear which statements are the source's claims rather than the reporter's own.

The option on a source who does not want to be identified describes anonymous sourcing, which is a weaker form of attribution, not its meaning. Acknowledging the reporter is a byline or credit line, and an editor writing a story has nothing to do with the term.

Answer: A

Journalists should look for a variety of sources representing different opinions.

Using several independent sources lets a reporter verify facts by cross-checking and present a story fairly, with each side of a dispute heard. It also protects against being used by a single source with an interest to push. This follows from the norms of accuracy, fairness and balance in journalism.

Relying on close friends and relatives, or on officials with a close personal relation to the journalist, creates conflicts of interest and narrows the story to one circle. Officials who expect some favour in return (the option as printed reads 'win expert some favour') compromise the reporter's independence, since the coverage becomes part of a trade.

Answer: D

Balance means covering all sides of an issue as fairly as possible.

A balanced story gives each significant viewpoint in a dispute a fair hearing, usually by seeking comment from those criticised or affected, so that readers can judge the issue for themselves. It is one of the core norms of objective reporting, alongside accuracy and fairness, though critics warn that false balance can give a fringe view equal weight with established facts.

Balance is not about layout, so giving every paragraph the same space misses the point. A lawyer's opinion concerns legal vetting against defamation, not balance, and having several authors write a story says nothing about whether the sides are fairly represented.

Answer: B

The element that is not among them is The subject should be true.

The Press Council of India's norms list three basic elements of investigative journalism: it has to be the work of the reporter, not of others he is reporting; the subject should be of public importance for the reader to know; and an attempt is being made to hide the truth from the people.

Truth is of course required of every news report, investigative or not, and the norms go on to require facts to be checked thoroughly. But it is not one of the three elements that define a story as investigative, so it is the odd one out here. The other three options are, word for word, the listed elements.