Questions and Answers with Official Reporter
Posted on June 10th, 2008 at 2:51 pm, by admin
Kathy Nielsen is an official reporter working in Kane County, IL who gave an interview to her local paper, The Beacon News. In the interview the reporter asks her questions that reporters everywhere often get about their profession.
But one question in particular stuck out when she was asked why court reporters were better than electronic recording. Ms. Nielson’s answer couldn’t be more on the point.
Why is this preferred rather than just making an audio recording of a trial?
“First of all, you don’t know who’s talking. I can indicate when there’s two attorneys and a judge talking, I have a symbol that I indicate in my notes who’s talking. And the more speakers you get, I of course can indicate who’s speaking. But on an audio tape you don’t know who’s talking. If you have six male voices you would not be able to discern who’s talking. Plus, on an audio recording, it wouldn’t always pick everything up. If two people talk at once, I can stop them. Tape would not be able to do that. If I can’t hear somebody, I can ask them to repeat. An audio tape would never do that. An audio tape would be very inferior.”
You can read the entire interview by clicking here.
June 21st, 2008 at 11:57 am
Increased allowance for litigants to appear by phone compounds the problem of speaker id. I’ve run into this when reporting in the courtroom off a speaker phone. i have to keep a tight reign on all the courtroom speakers as well and the party on the phone. If i wasn’t there to simultaneously untangle the speakers, the record would be a mess. they just become imersed in their business.
with all the multitasking that goes on in today’s courtrooms, controlling human behavior in order to make a record is becoming a full-time aspect to this job. especially pro-per litigants who just aren’t familiar or accustomed to “making a record”.
there’s also equipment in operation in today’s courtrooms that weren’t there years ago. printers, keys boards, noisy fans/cpus, phones. there are so many new distractions that i have to hear through or around in order to report the speakers. it’s a very proactive task to filter out competing conversations and activity to make the record.