A month ago, I wrote a post at Irregular Times showing how a New York Times reporter wrote a “news article” on the Apple Magic Mouse that was entirely derived, right down to the images, from an Apple Corporate Press Release. In an e-mail sent to a friend on the subject (despite multiple attempts to make contact with the New York Times the paper refused to communicate directly with me), the New York Times Technology editor admitted that for its articles having to do with new products, New York Times reporters “most certainly take the raw facts from news releases.” The editor also acknowledged that the New York Times had not actually seen, touched or experienced in any way the Apple Magic Mouse before announcing it as an innovation.
You can read my thoughts on this practice, and on what standards the New York Times should be adopting, in an article here. This has also been communicated to the New York Times, and the New York Times, again, has failed to respond to that communication.
But that’s not to say that the New York Times has failed to communicate with me entirely. Tonight, I received a threat of a lawsuit from the Legal Department of the New York Times, unless I “take down” the material, which involved a number of arrows pointing at the spots of the “Magic Mouse” announcement article derived from the Apple Corporate Press Release.
Such an activity, involving criticism and commentary, is protected by Section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law as “fair use:”
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.
But who are we kidding? I’m a guy who makes buttons in his basement for a living; the New York Times owns an entire building in Manhattan. It doesn’t matter that my inclusion and critical annotation of a brief New York Times article is protected as fair use under the law. Heck, it doesn’t even matter that the New York Times’ claim of copyright is dubious at best, considering that their “news article” is a reprocessed Apple corporate press release. What matters is that they have a big enough budget to bust my budget by making me hire a lawyer. So they get their way. That’s the way things work, and they know it. There is a big black box in that post where arrows pointing to evidence of a reprocessed press release used to be.
But really, the New York Times can’t get its way in the part of this story that matters. What really matters here isn’t that the New York Times threatened to sue me for scrawling my criticisms on top of its PR “news article.” What really matters is that the New York Times’ journalistic standards have degraded in the Technology section to the point that they’re shoving corporate press releases into publication as their own articles and not telling you about it. That’s not the standard that people expect when they read the New York Times. The Times was already hiding this practice by giving Times reporters bylines for the reprocessed press releases, but in going further and using the legal department to try and tamp that information down, the New York Times just made a mistake. You see, I had pretty much forgotten about the issue and really wasn’t inclined to write anything more on the topic. But gosh darn it, now the Times’ practice is extra-fresh in my mind, and I think I just might just write about the subject a little bit more.
I was researching something else, and came upon your very interesting article that definitely should be circulated, and I shall be sure to do it as much as possible myself. I have a question for you. Do you think a press release is an act of journalism protected under freedom of the press? How about freedom of speech?
By the way, aren’t we talking about plagiarism here? Even if the author of the article had agreement with the writer of a press release, is it not still ethical to cite the source? And plagiarism can be committed, not just by spouting someone’s words verbatim, but also by copying content, research, etc.
Good questions, PeterD. I don’t think we’re talking about plagiarism specifically because Apple PR’s wet dream is that the New York Times will copy and paste Apple’s press release into their newspaper. I think there’s implicit consent (if not begging) for such behavior by Apple. The ethical issue here I think lies in the relationship between the newspaper and the reader. The New York Times, of all newspapers, brands itself as a newspaper that will tell it as it sees things, not as it’s told to see things by a government, by a contributor, or by a corporation. To the extent that readers believe this they are, in the case of the technology section, being hoodwinked and their confidence in the NY Times is being betrayed.
Yes, one or two perfunctory calls would have let the Times writer earn his salary. He slid by, and you called him on it. What I think is outrageous is their trying to bring you to court over the issue. They should be reported to the Columbia Journalism Review, or whoever polices the journalistic profession. Reminds me of the gentleman who made t shirts with something remotely resembling a starbucks logo, and in the middle of it it said “f- off.” starbucks sued him, but I think he won in court. At any rate, I have posted the link on my facebook, and it has created a little buzz among some of the Times readers that frequent my network.