Scopist: Degradation of Reporter Skill is Helping AI Infiltration

As told to me by a valued Stenonymous reader:

“Hi, Christopher. [REDACTED]. I was a decades-long practicing [REDACTED] court reporter, and [REDACTED]. I edited my own work, so I was well aware of my good days and bad days. I started scoping/editing full time for reporters in around [REDACTED]. I am still scoping/ editing for reporters from all over the US — [REDACTED]. I have to say I am extremely disappointed and dismayed at the lack of qualifications I have experienced from the majority of these reporters. I find they are dropping an extraordinary amount of text, at times 15-20% and I am typing in the missing text for the reporters. This is not a one-off or occasional occurrence. I only bring this up to you because of the threat this industry is facing re AI, digital recorders, big box corporations, etc. I don’t know if this is a subject you (gingerly) would consider addressing in your Stenonymous articles – which I thoroughly enjoy, by the way. You are a driving force in the fight to save this industry. I do not expect a response from you. I am asking that you please keep this writing anonymous and confidential.”

I have to say that I have been a voice for quality in our field since before Stenonymous’s time. We used to have this weird mannerism in the profession where we had to pretend we were all perfect and never made mistakes. That may seem like a foreign concept to students of this day and age, whose mentors seem more willing to say everyone makes mistakes. It was never true that we didn’t. Being in New York City, I saw firsthand the degradation of skill in the stenographic reporter. By the time I came into the field, audio had become ubiquitous and many were reliant on it to the point where they couldn’t pass the civil service test that the state eliminated a few months ago. And worse, people pretended, and encouraged others to pretend, that the audio was not in use.

As best I can tell, this was under pressure from agencies, who were under pressure from high-strung clients. The Introverted Lawyer, Heidi Kristin Brown, once spoke to a crowd of court reporters about the nastiness she’d experienced in the legal field. I’ve met that nastiness too. So I understand the wilting nature of the court reporter and its agencies. Without each other to hold us up, it is easy for outside influences to cause us to feel less than — and it is easy for the people holding the wallet to screw any individual “person” out of a day’s pay. That’s understandably scary.

But I never ran from the digital problem or the misinformation campaign spread by the corps. I can’t run from ours either. This is not the first scopist to mention this to me. Probably won’t be the last.

I’ve been on jobs where using the audio as a crutch would’ve made the transcripts unusable.

I’ve been on jobs where the audio was a must because I was physically prevented from interrupting (think public meetings).

I’ve been on jobs where I used audio as a crutch.

I’ve been on jobs where I’ve been ordered not to use audio even where others factually do.

I hired a scopist once who called my writing “labyrinthian.” Haven’t hired one since.

I understand, more than anyone (hyperbole), the importance of the use of the tool, where appropriate.

But if you’re at the point where you’re dropping a fifth of the testimony in your stenographic note taking, it’s time to identify and correct that issue. And might I suggest that the issue is likely that you never learned to “control a room” because you used audio as a crutch. And that’s okay. It’s what you do with the future that counts. Making mistakes in our line of work is a much smaller problem than taking no action to correct them.

Those “button pushers” we denigrate? Some of them are better. Think about the ones that are honest about who they are and what they do. What do we have on them? Isn’t that what all this is about? Speaking out against corporate dishonesty and corner cutting because the transcript is important? I know some of them have told me they were trained to lie, obfuscate, or even provide fake names (cough, cough, Naegeli rumor, cough, worst court reporting company in the country?) But for the ones that are honest and feed us info, aren’t they “on our side?”

Maybe I’m kidding myself.

Maybe everybody’s afraid of the truth?

After all, you don’t think people in positions of power have heard my allegations? I sent them directly to a judge quoted in an article about us once. You think he wrote back?

People so afraid of looking foolish they’d rather promote a comfortable lie or ignore a terrible wrong than look at a situation with the analytical nuance that they do any day-to-day issue or case. It’s not their job. Why care? And the people whose job it is? They can make up excuses ad infinitum why they can’t care right now without consequence or accountability. This is why my publishing strategy is to get louder and louder until they all look like assholes for ignoring it. I don’t see another way forward. Doesn’t anyone else get it? Being nice to people that deny the truth got us where we are.

Reader, in a world of evil apes and ostriches, be a lion.

Or a sheepdog.

P.S.

Anyone actually good at fundraising/P.R./sales? Maybe we can make a deal and split donations. It’s a gamble. I can go months with minimal funding or make $1,000 in a day. It’s not like the money isn’t there to turn this into a small media operation. It just needs to be redirected a little bit. My real-life friends are too busy to help, so I leave it up to my readership.

Having our marriage ceremony soon. It’ll probably get pretty quiet on here for a while. Thanks for putting up with my double-post days these last few weeks. Have a wonderful weekend.

Ever eager to be a platform for your…

Addendum:

Toward the end of March 29th, Erin Blair made a comment that I asked to share with my audience. They are a respected member of the field, so I’m happy to share their views with my audience.

Erin Blair’s comments on Stenonymous’s blog post “Scopist: Degradation of Reporter Skill is Helping AI.”

We also had a brief discussion where I tried to explain I don’t mean to victim blame and believe the issue is nuanced.

New Mailing Address, Stenograph Update, and Academic Integrity, Oh My!

I’m relocating! Fan mail and things of that nature can go to 2744 Hylan Blvd, Unit 502, Staten Island, New York 10306. This is also where blog donations by check can go for those of you that prefer not to use the Stenonymous.com homepage box.

Sometime next week I’ll do an article on how Stenograph attempted to bully the Texas Court Reporters Association. As most of you know, I am against their push into automatic speech recognition for many reasons. The science we have today says ASR is only 25 to 80% accurate, yet they’ve billed it as a potential 50% productivity boost. That’s not possible. Stenograph has also slipped something into its licensing agreement where court reporters have to get releases for people’s voices or data being collected or run through the program. It doesn’t take a lawyer to tell us this is wrong. This is remarkably different from the apparent ethos of Eclipse on this matter, where they’re certainly developing ASR for use in stenographic software, but as of yet not attempting to shunt liability onto stenographers, and not, as far as I can see, making bogus productivity boost claims.

If you have digital court reporter transcripts you’d like to share with Dr. Halcyon Lawrence, please send them to me at ChristopherDay227@gmail.com. Academics have now taken note of the opaque behavior of tech companies. In order for this to be further studied, and to protect the public, we must become serious about sharing our knowledge and experience with those, like Halycon, that seek truth and transparency. The freedom of speech afforded to us in the United States protects academic integrity, and academic integrity protects the scientific processes that make our society great. This social contract gives all of us a special power to influence the future and make the world a better place.

The next few years are critical for this field. Our actions decide whether the future we sold our students is bright and positive or a constant struggle against the private equity brigade that is trying to consolidate and crush our profession. Life is a game of survival. I am firmly on the side that chooses to design the game in a way that we all win. And if life must have winners and losers, then may the losers be those that thought they could rob the future from our students and that we would stand back and let them. We stand resolute and united: This is our profession. We will survive and thrive.

Response to Times Bulletin Bullying Accusations

*A major update occurred within an hour of writing this post. See the addendum at the bottom. The Times Bulletin and/or Apsters Technologies chose to take down the post. I am very grateful to those organizations for their dedication to honesty.

My media work is interesting. I get lots of support. With that support comes the occasional message about how I’m ineffective or not changing anything. Today, I can show my audience just how effective I really am. On my post about how US Legal and Veritext lied about the shortage, it got loaded up with troll comments. Then last night while I was slumbering peacefully and/or coughing up my lungs, there was a pingback to the article “Is Christopher Day, AKA Stenonymous, Bullying Others In His Articles?”

I’ll just be upfront about it. In pockets of December and possibly November I was being a bully. That’s thanks to the mental illness I later found out about and addressed. I’m all better now.

Tellingly, the post doesn’t point to any of that behavior. It points to my very real and serious accusation that US Legal and Veritext are lying to the public and whines that that’s bullying. It claims “some have said that” I’ve crossed the line, but it gives no good example of where or when that line was crossed. The best crack they can take at it is that I made a post about US Legal and Veritext and insinuate the information I provide is inaccurate despite providing no evidence of inaccuracy.

The article also pokes at my claim that Brad Patterson and other commentators on the post in question were foreign troll operatives. Hilariously, the site itself is in India.

Apsters Technologies is awesome. See the addendum.

The author, “Derek Robins,” is a faceless entity I can’t contact or even look up as far as I can see.

I’m so effective that it appears a bona fide disinformation campaign has been started against me. I’m a little disappointed that it wasn’t funded or written better. I’m also a little insulted that they think my audience is full of unsophisticated rubes that’ll fall for that. But I am flattered to be the subject of such a campaign.

As always, I have attempted to mediate the situation Christopher Day style.

Addendum:

Apsters Technologies and the Times Bulletin appear to be legitimate. The author was likely the one who was bribed to write about me. I received the following response: