About press releases and e-mails

I need to talk about press releases and e-mails.

1) You need to understand that a press release represents only the first layer of reporting, gathering information that has been handed you. To accept what has been given to you without challenging it, without questioning it, is not journalism. To simply take what comes from a press release and regurgitate it into your story is lazy and deceptive to the public. They are counting on you to establish the facts for yourself, not to just be a secretary or a relay service for the public official. You need to ask questions. You need to find areas within the press release that must be challenged. And you need to attribute the facts given as coming from the press release.

2) The quotes included in a press release are not reliable quotes. You should be skeptical about using such quotes as if they came out of the mouth of the person that the press release says they came from. Why? Because usually they don't. What often happens is that an assistant, a PR rep or someone within the official's office is asked to generate a press release. They come up with quotes to put in the press release, and then ask the official to review it. The official looks at it, says, "That's fine with me," and the press release goes out without the words actually coming out of their mouth.

Some operations may be a little more ethical, where the assistant asks the official for a quote and the assistant writes it down. But the quote is still one that is sanitized and carefully crafted to express a safe point of view. You are not there in the room to challenge it or ask any kind of follow-up questions.

If you do get a press release that includes quotes, I would use them only in the rare case when you could not reach the person directly. And if you do use the quote, don't use the simple attribution: said. As in "This grant will be a boost to the economy of our fair and noble city," Mayor Joseph Jenkins said.

Instead, you need to write: "This grant will be a boost to the economy of our fair and noble city," Mayor Joseph Jenkins said in a press release. ... or said in a statement.

Let the public know that you did not talk to Joseph Jenkins personally.

The same goes for e-mails.

When you get an e-mail from a lawmaker's office, you are essentially getting a press release and you need to acknowledge that you did not gather this information yourself. Apply the same skepticism I've discussed above. You need to say it came from a press release or prepared statement.

Now, you may actually develop a reliable e-mail relationship with a source or official. Probably you established an in-person contact first, and then for efficiency sake, most of your contact is through e-mail.

You may be confident that the source wrote the e-mail themselves, but you still need to acknowledge that it came from an e-mail. Give the attribute as: "said in an e-mail" or "wrote in an e-mail."