On Monday I sent an email to my members to provide them an update on one of our active issues. Somehow, this email got sent to a reporter who decided to do an entire story based on my email WITHOUT EVER CALLING ME! Seriously, in the article it actually says, “XXX wrote in an e-mail message to members today.”
Now, this email was relatively harmless, however it did provide information on what the Government “intended” to do. So, it was not something I wanted in the press. Thisreporter does an entire story on it, and it gets picked up by a bunch of other reporters. It even got carried as BREAKING NEWS by one publication. Who does an ENTIRE story based on an email? How lazy is that? No other sources? No leg work? No PHONE CALL TO ME??????????
So here we sit, 3 days later and I am getting hounded by reporters asking me if this is going to happen. It stinks, because now I am not so sure I am going to be privy to advance information in the future.
The whole thing hacks me off. How do you do a story without calling the source? Isn’t that sub par journalism? Where are the ethics? All I can tell you is that reporter won’t get crap from me in the future!
(As you can tell, this really hacked me off…I am blogging about this several days after it happened…imagine my reaction on Monday!).
They did quote you — albeit via something you wrote in an e-mail. Unfortunately this happens all the time, especially now with the Internet. But it has happened since people were carving notes on stone tablets.
Well, you know, since there have been internal memos and letters or what not.
I’m sorry that happened. :-/
By: Geneen on June 14, 2009
at 9:39 pm
Sorry I didn’t read this sooner. I am a reporter for a Web site. Without reading the article, I would say that you need to nicely sent the reporter an e-mail telling her that you do not tolerate such bad reporting. If she ever would like to do an article about whatever issue this is, then she needs to speak with you personally or you will get in touch with her editor and get her fired. Yes, there is a timeline crunch with reporting, but she did need to get in contact with you. I would need to read the article though to see what she did.
By: Kim on July 17, 2009
at 3:20 pm
There is no way the reporter could be fired for that. And while she should have gone to Jen for quotes, quoting a memo is common practice.
By: Geneen on August 19, 2009
at 10:43 pm