the
three possible methods are, first, to leave the man's speech alone;
second, to report what he says or some complete part of what he says;
and third, to report what he means. But the present way of reporting
speeches (mainly created, I think, by the scrappy methods of the _Daily
Mail_) is something utterly different from both these ways, and quite
senseless and misleading.

The present method is this: the reporter sits listening to a tide of
words which he does not try to understand, and does not, generally
speaking, even try to take down; he waits until something occurs in the
speech which for some reason sounds funny, or memorable, or very
exaggerated, or, perhaps, merely concrete; then he writes it down and
waits for the next one. If the orator says that the Premier is like a
porpoise in the sea under some special circumstances, the reporter gets
in the porpoise even if he leaves out the Premier. If the orator begins
by saying that Mr. Chamberlain is rather like a violoncello, the
reporter does not even wait to hear why he is like a violoncello. He has
got hold of something material, and so he is quite happy. The strong
words all are put in; the chain of thought is left out. If the orator
uses the word "donkey," down goes the word "donkey." If the orator uses
the word "damnable," down goes the word "damnable." They follow each
other so abruptly in the report that it is often hard to discover the
fascinating fact as to what was damnable or who was being compared with
a donkey. And the whole line of argument in which these things occurred
is entirely lost. I have before me a newspaper report of a speech by Mr.
Bernard Shaw, of which one complete and separate paragraph runs like
this--

"Capital meant spare money over and above one's needs. Their country was
not really their country at all except in patriotic songs."

I am well enough acquainted with the whole map of Mr. Bernard Shaw's
philosophy to know that those two statements might have been related to
each other in a hundred ways. But I think that if they were read by an
ordinary intelligent man, who happened not to know Mr. Shaw's views, he
would form no impression at all except that Mr. Shaw was a lunatic of
more than usually abrupt conversation and disconnected mind. The other
two methods would certainly have done Mr. Shaw more justice: the
reporter should either have taken down verbatim what the speaker really
said about Capital, or have given an outline