Comments on: Press release printed “nearly verbatim” in paper

By: stan jones

stan jones — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 22:45:39 +0000

pretty awful and sloppy

By: stan jones

stan jones — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 15:45:39 +0000

pretty awful and sloppy

By: mukesh11

mukesh11 — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 21:46:00 +0000

The legal arrangement for the right to occupy a dwelling is known as the housing tenure. Types of housing tenure include owner occupancy, Tenancy, housing cooperative, condominiums (individually parceled properties in a single building), public housing, squatting, and cohousing.

Residences can be classified by if and how they are connected to neighboring residences and land. Different types of housing tenure can be used for the same physical type. For example, connected residents might be owned by a single entity and leased out, or owned separately with an agreement covering the relationship between units and common areas and concerns.
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mukesh11
real estate – real estate

By: SteveW

SteveW — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 09:52:12 +0000

My two bob’s worth: not plagiarism, but verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry lazy journalism.

By: Baylink

Baylink — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 20:19:29 +0000

Lots of press releases run verbatim, and they have for years.

Flacks love it when newspapers screw up that way.

But I concur, the error isn’t plagiarism; it’s failing to correctly identify the source.

Plagiarism speaks, in my mind, to whether or not the source *expected* the material to be published as much as it does to attribution.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:49:48 +0000

Well, there is plagiarism, then there is plagiarism. I find it odd that a newspaper would run a correction of this nature. Really, press releases are sent out by organizations who hope that that the information is published, thus permission is tacitly granted to use it. Would a paper run the phrase “according to a press release” a hundred times in a row in the community calendar section? Technically, every obit we receive from a funeral home is a press release, should we attribute those as well? If this is the new standard of plagiarism, everyone who ever rewrote a press release (including me) is now guilty.

By: Charlene

Charlene — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 11:53:12 +0000

Never print a press release verbatim. At best, you become nothing but a shill for whichever corporation or marketing group sent out the press release. At worst, you can end up on the wrong side of a major lawsuit if the press release is a malicious hoax. The press release ‘announcing’ John Basedow’s death in the Boxing Day tsunami (and no, he didn’t die – he wasn’t even in the region) is just one example.

By: Craig Silverman

Craig Silverman — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 21:30:48 +0000

I agree that press releases are written to end up in the paper, but it’s unethical to print one verbatim, or to not cite the source. If you use another person’s words and don’t credit them, it’s plagiarism. Even if it’s a press release.

As for the ethics of publishing a press release verbatim, check out this series of posts:
http://valleywag.com/tech/vendor_generated-content/

By: Blake

Blake — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 21:24:43 +0000

Cmon man … running a press release is plagiarism? They WANT the press release run in the paper.

Of course, you should always note that the information is “according to a press release,” which was the mistake in this case, but newspapers and magazines regularly run press releases verbatim.