Whose Press Release Is It, Anyway?

Ombudsman reader Brian Crecente, of the always excellent Red Assed Baboon, recently wrote me an e-mail with the somewhat accusatory title: "Plagarism or just being lazy?" Brian pointed me to a TeamXBox article that "apparently just cut and paste the press release and slapped a byline over it." Brian included a copy of the press release to prove his point and, sure enough, they are exactly the same (as far as I can tell). Brian asks, "I suppose it's shy of plagiarism since the people who wrote the press release will be ecstatic, but it seems unethical in some way. What do you think?"



Before answering, I felt I needed some more information, so I went straight to the source and e-mailed the article's author, TeamXBox News/Hardware Editor César A. Berardini, to ask a few basic questions about the article. His response appears in italics below, interspersed with my comments (not italicized). The bold-italics indicates my original questions to Cesar.



hi Kyle,



How is it going? Thanks for contacting TeamXbox. Regarding your question, yes, this is a "common practice", as you call it, not only on TeamXbox but in many other sites that focus on deliver [sic] news (instead of stories) first. It's been our style since 1999.



I deal with how much of a "common practice" this is below, but here I want to focus on delivering "news (instead of the stories) first." There's nothing wrong with that, but why not call a spade a spade and let the audience know that what they're reading was written by a public relations professional and not by you? This way you can get the information up quickly and still represent it fairly to the reader.



That article you mention sounds more like a media alert than a press release to me, and even press releases are modified a bit so they are easy to read. We also have found that companies don't like their info to be modified or edited and because we believe in freedom of speech for both parties, we let our visitors post any comment, no matter how hard that may sound to the company issuing that press info. As an example, everytime there is a news about an EA game, a user called FIG has tough comments about EA and its games. We have never deleted/edited his comments or anyone else's feedback.



Notwithstanding the difference between a "media alert" and a press release (a purely semantic one, as far as I can tell) I surely wouldn't advocate editing any PR information that came directly from a game company. Besides angering the PR folks, it would be more than a slight misrepresentation to, in effect, put words into their mouths. But I don't think it's any less of a misrepresentation to put up an unedited press release (or "media alert" or anything from a public relations person) and posting it under your byline with no indication of the true author, as was done here.



As for the comment about not editing comments, that is neither here nor there (but I do think it's a commendable stand).



Do you feel this is a common practice elsewhere in video game journalism? It used to be a common practice in PC news sites and TeamXbox introduced this style to video game news site. Then many other (video game coverage) sites followed us.



He's right, to an extent. A quick google search of the first ten words of the press release confirms that at least a handful of sites ran the press release verbatim. However, some of them actually identified the article as a press release, either by shouting FROM THE PRESS RELEASE, by using a more discrete [PR] note on the main page (though no indication appeared in the actual article page), or by grouping it under the "press releases" section of a newswire. TeamXBox did none of these things.



Do you feel it is clear to readers that this article is a press release and not original writing by yourself? Yes, it is clear to anyone when it is a press release since press releases have a format. "Company announced today that" (...) "Quote by executive" (...) "Game Description" Many of our visitors post the same press releases in our forums. They know they can find them in businesswire, yahoo! news or google news.



First of all, this article does not have any of those phrases or patterns in it and, to me, reads more like a quick news blurb than a press release (and I've read my fair share of both). I think it would be hard for an average reader to make this distinction, unless they troll "businesswire, yahoo! news or google news," regularly (which I assume most of them don't).



Press releases in forum posts are, again, a whole 'nother issue.



Does TeamXBox make any effort to make this clear to the reader? Same question again. There is no need for such a thing. The first thing you learn in journalism is that the audience is not dumb. They are smart and they always choose what they think is the best for them. One million users choose TeamXbox because they think it is the best site covering Xbox.



While I asked before if it was clear to the reader, here I'm asking what effort you make to make it clear to the reader. Obviously there is none. One of the first things I learned in journalism, actually, was to assume the reader is usually not as smart as you are on the particular topic you write about. After all, you write about it for a living, while they are just a random reader trying to learn more. They may not be dumb, but they don't necessarily have the savvy to figure out the difference between a press release and a poorly crafted article. What is "best for them" is probably knowing who actually wrote the article they are reading, no matter how many of them there are.



Do you feel there is anything wrong with putting your name in the byline of an article such as this that you did not write? No, there is nothing wrong with it since most of these news also include screenshots, movies and sometimes an editor's note. In the past, we used to have other fields (Source Name, Source URL, etc.) but they were discarded when we found out no one cared about them or clicked in those links. We started to use instead (like many other sites) a "thanks [source name+URL] for the heads-up" line.



First of all, I see no "thanks... for the heads-up" line anywhere in this article. Secondly, just because people don't click the link to find the same information you are reposting on your site (and why would they... they just read it) doesn't mean they don't care about the notice. Personally, I like to know when what I'm reading is written by a game company and not a game journalist, and I don't think I'm totally alone. The effort it would take to correctly source the article is not a siginificant barrier either. As for the point about screenshots and movies, those are often provided by the game company too. The editor's note might be by you, but it should be clear to the reader that the rest of the copy is not.



I hope these answers help you in your quest.



Let me add one more thing; I don't think there is a need to use a sentence such as "If I do not hear back from you, I will be forced to write on this matter without comment from you." for the simple reason it sounds more like a threat than an inquiry.



I included this line because it is true... I can't really write an article with a comment from you if I don't get a comment from you. But I did get a comment from you, and now I've commented on that comment. And the circle of life continues.



So, in answer to the original question, "plagiarism or just being lazy?" I'd have to say a little of both. Plagiarism because it doesn't correctly identify (or even hint at) the true author, and laziness because it would only take a few second to correctly identify (or even hint at) the true author.