PR AND BLOGGER ETHICS: I talked to a reporter about blogs and PR -- I
won't spoil the story, but the gist is that some PR people have been
sending stuff to bloggers, and some bloggers have apparently reprinted
some of it without attribution.
I think that's bad, but as I stressed in our interview, it's not as if
this supports a "bloggers lack the standards of mainstream journalism"
conclusion. In fact, here's a bit from The Appearance of Impropriety
on that topic:
Thirty-five years ago Daniel Boorstin wrote of what he called
"pseudo-events," and noted that much of what passes for news is
actually made up of items manufactured by public relations flacks and
distributed to the public by way of news organizations. The news
organizations, he wrote, go along with this sort of thing out of a need
for material, and out of laziness: it's just easier to take predigested
material and reprint it than it is to come up with real news. In tones
of dismay, Boorstin reported that the National Press Club in Washington
was equipped with racks holding the handouts from press conferences
throughout the capital, in order to save the reporters the trouble of
actually attending. As Boorstin went on to note:
We begin to be puzzled about what is really the "original" of an
event. The authentic news record of what "happens" or is said comes
increasingly to seem to be what is given out in advance. More and
more news events become dramatic performances in which "men in the
news" simply act out more or less well their prepared script. The
story prepared "for future release" acquires an authenticity that
competes with that of the actual occurrences on the scheduled date.
The practice Boorstin described has not gone away: it has expanded
into new frontiers. Technology in the early 1960s was primitive, and
favored live or minimally-produced television news; as a result, that
medium acquired a reputation for realism and immediacy that print
reporting lacked. A print story could be made up, but an image on
television was real. But nowadays, when many high schools have
network-quality television studios, and when videotape is sold at
convenience stores, that has changed. Although a "video news release"
is still more expensive to produce than a standard paper press release,
they have become much more common. According to a recent poll,
seventy-five percent of TV news directors reported using video news
releases at least once per day.
These releases, with their high quality images and slick production,
are produced by companies and groups who want to get their message
across, but don't want simply to purchase advertising time. They are
designed so that television producers at local stations or (less often)
major networks, can simply intersperse shots of their own reporters or
anchors (often reading scripted lines provided with the release) to
give the impression that the story is their own. Their use has been the
subject of considerable controversy within the journalistic profession,
although some commentators have claimed that they are used no more
often, or misleadingly, than written press releases are used by the
print media.
A recent scandal in Britain involved network use of a video news
release produced by the group Greenpeace that some considered
misleading. But of course for every video news release, or VNR as they
are called in the trade, that comes from an environmental group there
are hundreds that come from businesses or government organizations.
Though a keen eye can usually spot a VNR (hint: the subject matter
wouldn't otherwise be news, and it usually involves experts and locales
far from the station that airs it) most viewers probably believe that
today’s story on cell-phone safety or miracle bras is just another
product of the news program's producers – and hence, implicitly backed
by the news people’s public commitment to objective journalism. The
truth, however, is different.
It is fair to say that the wholesale use of others' work is a major
part of modern journalism. But news officials are quick to distinguish
that from plagiarism. In a mini-scandal at the San Diego Tribune, a
reporter's story was cancelled when editors noticed that it looked very
much like a story that had already appeared elsewhere. At first,
presumably, it was thought that the story had been taken from the other
publication. Then it turned out that both stories were simply
near-verbatim versions of a press release. According to the Tribune's
deputy editor, that wasn't plagiarism. "If you look up the definition
of plagiarism, it is the unauthorized use of someone's material. When
someone sends you a press packet, you're entitled to use everything in
there."
Certainly this statement seems to capture the attitude of many in
the journalistic professions. One public-relations handbook explains it
this way:
Most reporters aren’t scoop-hungry investigators. They’re wage
earners who want to please their editors with as little effort as
possible, and they’re happy to let you provide them with ideas and
facts for publishable stories. That is why most publicity is positive
for people and their businesses.
You’re still not convinced? Go to the library and glance through a
few days’ issues of several newspapers, including the Wall Street
Journal, USA Today, and some local papers. You’ll discover that the
same stories appear over and over again. That’s because they were
initiated by the companies being covered, not by an eager young
reporter looking for a scoop.
An experiment by a group of journalism students at the University of
Tennessee demonstrates just how willing reporters can be to accept
facts and story ideas that involve little work. The students concocted
a fictitious press release from a group opposing "political
correctness" and mailed it to a number of newspapers. Most did not run
it, but quite a few did -- and none checked the details one way or
another. One newspaper even embellished the story with additional
details that were not included in the original press release. When word
of the experiment got out, journalists were predictably outraged, with
one even saying that it violated the bond of trust (!) between
journalists and public-relations professionals. A more likely
explanation for the outrage is that the experiment uncovered a pattern
of shoddy work that its practitioners would have preferred to keep
unexposed. Not plagiarism, perhaps, but something that in many ways is
worse.
Every successful system attracts parasites. The blogosphere is a
successful system. That doesn't excuse bad conduct, of course. But I hope
that nobody will try to pretend that this sort of thing is new or
unusual, even if the setting is.
4th
Estate
