If you looked at Star News’ Facebook page this weekend, you’d have thought that they were putting on a Confederate Flag rally at Danville’s museum. They had nothing to do with the rally, but a bad decision to copy and paste an email gave people the wrong impression.
This came in from our SouthsideCentral tip line…
Well, then.
The first thing that I know, this is not the work of Mark Childrey. He doesn’t copy and paste emails and press releases verbatim unless he gives direct credit to the source. He’s immune to this RottenReporting incident. And “Reporting” is the key word.
If you don’t read what you’re copying, you run into situations like this. When you say “Come out and celebrate our Confederate history and heritage” and invite people to “bring your family, your friends, lawn chairs and your FLAGS for this exciting event”, you’re making it sound like you and your organization is promoting the event as a sponsor.
Mixing news and opinion is a delicate balance. You’ve got to have a way for your viewers/readers to know the difference. Mark Childrey is the perfect example of how to do it right on TV. During his news segments, it’s clearly denoted with a NewsCentral bumper and “news” logos plastered on the screen. (NewsCentral? Where did they get that branding idea from? Heh.) When Mark switches gears for his talk show, that segment is started with a “Star Talk” bumper and the “talk” logo is well seen to the viewers. Here on SouthsideCentral, I’ve got two category flags that I activate… NewsCentral (hey, that sounds familiar!) and OpinionCentral. When you see those categories on an article, you know what you’re getting. Although the difference between news and opinion writing should be clear to the readers, I want to make sure I do my best in getting the difference clear. Somebody at Star News wised up within six hours and after a bunch of complaints and deleted the bad posting, but it was a shame that whoever cut and pasted it didn’t see it in the first place.
If you have to copy and paste a press release verbatim, you should always cite your source for reference. You should always carefully read material like this to make sure that you’re not seeming to endorse a viewpoint that’s not supported by you and your corporate management.
Whoever posted this on Star News’ Facebook page didn’t do any of those things. That’s RottenReporting.
Leave a Reply