Reminder: Anybody can request a correction, but nobody but my editors gets to dictate new phrasing in the corrected story
Twice in the last two months, I’ve received correction requests from publicists for tech companies–which, sadly enough, is not that out of the ordinary. What was unusual: Both of these requests included replacement language with instructions for me to plug that into the articles in question.
That, as the saying goes, is Not How Any Of This Works.
Everybody has the right to request a correction in a story if they think they spotted an error in it. It’s my job to give those requests a fair read… even though I hate screwing up and I hate getting called out on it.
But catching a mistake doesn’t convey a right to dictate how I fix it, not unless you’re my editor. That’s not wounded pride talking; that’s basic journalistic ethics.
One of the first commandments in this profession is “don’t plagiarize.” And copying and pasting somebody else’s words without putting them in quotes is the dictionary definition of that offense.
Another, slightly more nuanced rule is “don’t let the people you cover see your copy before publishing.” You can find edge-case exceptions like checking a quote or verifying that you’re accurately describing some complicated situation, but going beyond that is ethically fraught. And having the source know exactly how the copy will read because they wrote it in the first place? Absolutely not.
My theory is that these control-freak attempts at correction procurement are the fault of clueless clients who think media coverage is just another gig-economy service they can order up. As in, none of this post should be news to PR professionals, many of whom have worked as journalists.
(If you were about to ask: Both of the publicists involved backed off when I replied to their e-mails with a much shorter version of this post.)
But whatever the reason, these prescriptive requests amount to asking me to commit two separate firing offenses. And since I like this work and would like to keep doing it, that makes them one of the worst possible ways to ask me for a correction. So could we just not do this?
#comms #controlFreakery #correction #cx #errors #journalisticEthics #mistakesWereMade #publicRelations #techPr