PR Squared: Guest Post: Should All Releases Have Disclaimers on “Intent to Promote a Product?”

The following post was written by our own Chris Iafolla, in Boston. It was originally published at our staff blog, UnSpun. I tweeted it tonight and got some supportive comments back… and since I am going to be out o’ pocket tomorrow, I thought I’d post Chris’s words here. If thoughtful & compelling content like this doesn’t getcha’ to check out our UnSpun blog, I dunno what will!

Here’s Chris …

Row1-2 After reading Tom Foremski’s post suggesting that all press releases be marked “Not to Be Distributed by News Aggregators” I hesitated to write this post, because my initial reaction was driven by emotion and not rational thought. After sitting on it for almost a week, I found that many of my initial thoughts still persisted.

Let me start off by saying that I respect Tom Foremski. Some of his posts have led to important changes in the PR industry. In addition, I don’t think Tom believes that all PR people are out to deceive or manipulate the system. That being said, I think he might have overstepped his bounds a little bit on this one.

First, let’s look at Tom’s underlying message that journalists are independent, objective reporters of the news. This is certainly the intent of a free press in a democratic nation, but I think most of us can agree it is not the outcome. You mean to tell me that the New York Times is not a liberal slanted paper, and the Wall Street Journal is not a conservative slanted paper? Taking a leap of faith and calling the stories of journalists unbiased would be an injustice.

Now that I got that off my chest, down to the PR part of this.

There is a sweeping assumption made here that all PR people are out to deceive—plain not true. Are advertisers required to put a statement across the front of their ads saying this information is intended to promote the products of XYZ company? In most cases: no. Discerning people understand the dynamic at play. And aren't we already disclosing the source of the content? Content written by a journalist has a byline from a journalist. Company press releases are marked as such, and have company and PR contacts listed. Is this not transparency? My other issue with Tom’s post is the idea that press releases are not news. If a journalist writes a story based on my client’s announcement in a press release, how is that not news? It may not be the same “spin” (yes, journalists spin too) that a reporter might put on it, but it is the story my client believes is important to the industry.

I do appreciate the need to uphold ethical business practices. But, Tom's intended goal (in his own words) is to "allow people to make their own judgment on the quality of the content." By putting a disclaimer across the top that says our purpose is to promote a product, are we not cheapening the message contained in that release? In effect, we would be removing any hope of allowing a consumer to judge the quality of the content because we are telling them up front that we have a hidden agenda.

Comments

Great post. I think that some of these calls for disclaimers and whatnot are getting a bit silly--it implies that people are either too dumb or too busy to be discerning readers. Consumers are smarter than they are given credit for, and I think putting disclaimers such as Tom suggests will make news releases even more unreadable.

Some of this backlash, in my opinion, is being caused by the sheer number of releases being churned out.

And, in all fairness, some news releases are *not* news--but that's an issue that PR firms need to take up with their clients, some of whom are so eager to get press that every time they make a color change or minor product modification, they want to send a release out. PR firms need to say no to these no-news news releases, even if it means forgoing the billable hours spent writing, sending, and monitoring the pickup. Reducing the number of these nonsense releases would likely engender at least some goodwill, but it would have to be done on a large scale, by many agencies, to cause a notable drop.

Again, great post.

Jen

Posted by: Jen White | October 31, 2007 09:51 AM

This is a question of ethics. Either way, social media will alleviate this concern by providing a full perspective.

Posted by: Dan Schawbel | October 31, 2007 10:28 AM