Who's At Fault If The FTC Is Positioning A Press Release As A News Story?
from the details,-details dept
Broadband Reports points us to a confusingly written story about supposedly "deceptive" tactics by the FTC in repurposing a press release as a news article for newspapers to run. Unfortunately, since the article itself isn't entirely clear, it sounds like the real problem isn't the FTC, but the newswire service, North American Precis Syndicate, that appears to take press releases and so-called "Video News Releases" (VNRs) and distribute them as if they were straight news stories. There are plenty of news sources that will reprint press releases (usually, though not always, making it clear that it's a press release). However, in this case, it sounds like (at least from the article's description) that North American Precis Syndicate reformats these press releases to make them seem less like press releases and more like straight news articles. So, this hardly seems like the fault of the FTC, but of North American Precis Syndicate and the news publications that rely on it for news.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: fake news, fcc, ftc, press releases
Companies: north american precis syndicate
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Ah, NAPS
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Re: Ah, NAPS
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Anyone who works with the press knows this. I always wrote press releases so that just about everything after the first paragraph could be copied and pasted (or to date myself) retyped.
I place a lot of blame on editors and the media organizations. The pay for reporters is often low so the organizations cannot really demand quality work. A lot of reporters do not even have a background in journalism. On the other hand a lot of editors are quite well paid (depending on the type of news organization). I put a lot of the blame on editors for letting this kind of thing get past them.
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Press Releases ARE News
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Need The Public Support
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Aha!
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Placing releases as news stories, feature stories
Services like News USA, guarantee the pr person their stories will run in hundreds of newspapers, the editors can pick and choose from the quality supply at www.newsusa.com
Also, now with RSS & XML feeds as free content for web sites. NEWS USA guarantees it's work and the content or "fill" is excellent; check it out, use the service.
NEWS USA will even mock up stories for you at no obligation.
1-800-355-9500
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GOOD JOB
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Marketing
Marketing is an integrated communications-based process through which individuals and communities discover that existing and newly-identified needs and wants may be satisfied by the products and services of others.
Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. The term developed from the original meaning which referred literally to going to market, as in shopping, or going to a market to buy or sell goods or services.
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will smith
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real estate-real estate
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real estate
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