Do you edit for content or edit for comprehension? Are you worried that adding extra sound effects to a news feature or documentary instead of capturing the truth as recorded is a misrepresentation of reality? How much audio ‘enhancement’ is too much?

What are the ethics of audio editing?

Here are a couple of suggestions.

From the Radio Television Digital News Association:

• Do not reconstitute the truth. Don’t add sounds that did not exist unless it is clear to the audience that they have been added in the edit room. A good question to ask in such circumstances is, “What would audiences say if they knew the truth about how this story was gathered and edited?” Would viewers feel deceived or tricked? When adding any sound or effect, it should be obvious and apparent to the viewer that the journalist has chosen to alter the scene or sound. Ask yourself, “Is this what I heard when I was on the scene?”
• Be judicious in your use of music and special sound effects. When you add music to a story, the audience must understand you have added the sounds. Music, especially, has the ability to send complex and profound editorial messages.
• Apply the same careful editing ethics standards to your newscast teases, promotions and headlines that you do for your news stories. If it is unethical to add sounds or production techniques to a news story than it is just as harmful to use those techniques during a promotion for that news story.

From the Canadian Journalism Project:

• It’s okay, even expected, that you will cut out ums, ers, long pauses, and other examples of verbal stalling - unless their verbal stalling is key part of the story, as in the case of a politician ducking tough questions.
• It’s okay, even recommended, that you will cut out extraneous words.
• It’s okay to cut out reiterations, if you can do it skillfully enough to avoid a jumpy cut that sounds either unnatural or like an obvious, audible edit.
• In other words, it’s okay to make edits that help someone sound sharper, tighter, clearer. It’s also okay to use excerpts or clips from an interview in a different order in your story than they appeared in the original interview. Similarly, it’s okay to ask someone to identify themselves at the end of the interview, and use that at the beginning of the interview on the air.
• It’s not okay to tell someone what to say. It is okay to re-ask or, better still, rephrase a question to allow someone another chance to collect his or her thoughts and answer it again. Often, they are clearer and more succinct the second time around.
• It is not okay for you, as the interviewer, to record different questions and dub them in or substitute them for the ones you asked during the interview.

And from journalism professor Mindy McAdams:

Truth is the paramount yardstick against which you must measure your work. Ask yourself: Is it true? Or have I distorted the truth?

• If you have a sound bite at the end where, for example, the person states her name and occupation, it is okay to cut that from the end and move it to the beginning. (It does not distort the truth.)
• It is NEVER okay to use canned sound effects that did not come from the scene. For example, you would NEVER take a clip of some cows mooing and add it to your interview with a farmer in his cornfield. If you didn’t get that farmer’s own cows, from where you were standing in that field, then you can’t use any cows.

That’s their take; what do you think?