Quoting poor English in a news article? I don't often see "[sic]"

Consider this advice from the Chicago Manual Of Style online:

Q: Dear Editor, I am editing a quarterly bulletin for a church, and have run into a problem. “It’s” is confused with “its” in a lengthy article an author quotes in his text. Given your feeling on the overuse of “sic,” I’m wondering how best to handle this. Simply ignore it, or “sic” it? I appreciate your help. Thank you.

A: A bit of quiet copyediting is best in cases like this, where sic would serve only to embarrass the original author and as a result reflect poorly on the current author as well.

Granted, that's only one source but it at least shows that it happens sometimes. I also find the emphasized part interesting.

Also consider that [sic] is not required. It is an aid to the reader to let them know that the mistake was on the part of the original speaker and not the author. I find very commonly that folks just leave the grammatical mistakes in the original quotes with no associated remarks.

I think that using '[sic]' is different for a "slip of the pen" than for a "slip of the tongue." If you are reporting what a person speaks, help him out in your transcription. ("Save him from himself," an editor I know often says.) But if you are citing a written work, which was presumably better thought out and maybe even proofread by multiple people, there is less leniency. Also, remember '[sic]' isn't just to point out mistakes, it's to indicate that quoted words have been transcribed exactly as presented in the original. So, technically, you could make the argument that '[sic]' should ONLY be used when quoting written works, and not when transcribing a quote.

It depends on the newspaper and the editors. And what people consider to be "grammatical errors." All of these vary wildly in every dimension possible. So the answer is "Sometimes yes, sometimes no."