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
