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Introduction
In addition to regular collection, TV Transcripts serves as a supplemental source to demonstrate an officials viewpoint on current issues.
Transcripts are taken from popular news sources (NBC, MSNBC, FOX, CNN, CBS and others) These transcripts for the most part are interviews/discussions with current officials and candidates.
Transcripts Schedule
This schedule takes a lower priority to regular statement collection, and this schedule should primarily only be collected when there is little to no statements backlog, and regular schedules have all been collected within the last 2 months.
During 2016-2017, because of events such as understaffing, office location move, 2016 presidential election, as well as others, the TV transcript schedule has compiled a large backlog through the majority of this time. In the past, this project has been done by volunteers off-site, who do not have access to admin, and minimized staff hours working on filtering through transcript archives, and solely focus on entering filtered speeches into admin. However, without these resources, this project poses a very difficult and lengthy process for staff, and thus is a lower priority collection schedule.
TV Transcripts can be very time consuming to collect, as not all transcripts are relevant to be collected. Most of the time is spent determining which transcripts are appropriate and relevant to be collected. In the past, this filtering of transcripts has been done by volunteers off-site, rather than spend staff hours filtering through transcripts. This is why this schedule is of low priority, due to the large time spent filtering rather than actual collection.
Transcripts Format
Collection of TV transcripts is very similar to collection of Floor Speeches from the Congressional Record, while following usual statement collection criteria (significant policy discussion) and spoken by the regular collection officials and candidates during election season.
As is done with Floor Speeches, a “BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT” is included at the beginning and end of the segmented transcript, as well as in any other gaps in the transcript where the official does not have a spoken role.
TV Transcripts should NOT be shared between multiple officials i.e. transcripts with multiple officials should be formatted to include only one individual.
In addition to these rules, the standard formatting for transcripts follows these rules:
- Date: Date TV show was aired (Usually same date found on Transcript).
- Location: Unknown, unless a location is given on Transcript.
- Type: Interview.
- URL: Copy the URL of Transcript link.
- Title: News Source 'Show Title' - Transcript: Show Topic
(Example: MSNBC "The Ed Show" - Transcript: Trans Pacific Partnership and Immigration).
Can find more details on formatting on the fieldboxes Wiki page - http://wiki.votesmart.org/FieldBoxes
Transcript Collection
Transcript collection involves multiple steps to collect and enter into Admin. Admin takes up only a small portion of the schedule, whereas most time is consumed by searching various news sources for appropriate data;
- Locate transcript page on news source - most will be the direct link from the schedule.
- Search through archived transcripts to locate interviews that contain relevant data.
- See Take / Do Not Take Wiki for collection criteria - http://wiki.votesmart.org/Text .
- Using Control-F to search for keywords “interview” / “Senator” / “Congressman” to help locate potential relevant data.
- When entering Transcripts into Admin, remember;
- Ensure you are entering Transcript under the correct official; and not sharing Transcript (only include speaking roles of single individual).
- Include “BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT” at beginning and end of edited transcripts, as well as any breaks in interview where transcript portions are removed.
- Format field boxes, as indicated in field boxes wiki - http://wiki.votesmart.org/FieldBoxes .
- Categorize and Tag data according to the subject.
