Press releases aren’t news just because I say so
One of the great oddities of Google News is that it publishes press releases.
So whereas a news medium would normally publish stories that a journalist agrees are news (and has edited for style and hyperbole) Google News (together with rivals Yahoo, MSN et al) simply publish the release verbatim no matter how trivial or just plain wrong. And anybody can submit a press release for free using a service like PR Leap.
The result is that search engine news services are susceptible to great deal of nonsense, spin and puff. They have taken the journalists out of the news equation. Public relations people can say whatever they like on behalf of those who employ them and Google will present this as news.
This week’s PR Business picks up on the case of Thomas Vendetta, a fifteen year old who put out a hoax press release claiming he was a Google employee. It made Google News.
Even new news media needs to create some distance and independence from its sources, especially when we’re paid to put a particular view across or get a product sold.
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