On 8/13/06, jayjg jayjg99@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/13/06, Matt Brown morven@gmail.com wrote:
On 8/13/06, jayjg jayjg99@gmail.com wrote:
The accuracy of a quote in a book can easily be verified by going to a library and looking it up; often the quotes can even be found online. How does one verify the accuracy of a screencap?
Presumably by obtaining the movie in VHS or DVD form. Many libraries have collections of movies for loan, and there are commercial providers as well (cf Blockbuster, etc)
Once there, one can look for the scene.
24 frames per second, times 2 hours? That works out to over 170,000 frames. Is the fact-checker supposed to skip through a frame at a time? And even then how can one assure that the screencap hasn't been altered in some subtle way? And then one must actually describe what one sees in the screencap, which, of course, is open to many different interpretations (i.e. original research).
With a quotation, it's quite simple - get the book, open up to the page number listed, and read a couple of hundred words. Do the words in the article match what's in the book? Verified.
...
Jay.
Not really. Which book, what edition? Consider the Bible - there are dozens and dozens of possible original source manuscripts, and then even more possible ways to edit their errors and ambiguities into a generally acceptable text, and then one must decide on punctuation (most of the languages concerned having none), and then one must consider what books will be ruled canon, and then the actual translation could be one of hundreds. How does one verify a Bible quotation? And the Tripitaka is even worse in this regard. (The Koran isn't such a textual problem, but that's because all the variant versions were burned early on and the designated edition religiously maintained until the relatively short time to the invention of the printing press, IMO).
Or the Origin of Species - which of the six editions by Darwin (varying substantially) would one be quoting from? Would a section from the 1st overrule one from the 6th? Or would one split the difference and go with #3?
Matter of fact, it's probably easier to 'verify' an image since most films and such are released in one way, unlike texts which are endlessly malleable. (No, Star Wars is not a good counterexample here, and arguments that citing frame number FOO is a hopelessly brittle solution apply with equal force to books where pages and layout can be altered willy-nilly between editions).
~maru