Ethics in interviews - should content be made public before the article is published?

Okay, this is still bugging me, so I'm going to talk about it. Does it seem ethical to anyone out there that someone would publish, on the Internet, the answers for an interview conducted by a journalist? We're talking about taking the questions asked, and the answers given, and publishing them online well before the journalist has a chance to even write the story. The same day in some cases apparently. I'm trying not to place my own opinion on this, because I suppose I can see where, from an amateur's point of view, it would look like a good idea. Protect your word and all that jazz, make sure that the journalist does not misrepresent what you said, cover your own ass. But what about from the journalist's point of view?

If I was writing a piece on someone and they took all of the notes that I had asked for and put them online in a blog, I think I would be a little annoyed. Here I went and found the person, requested an interview, composed my questions, and presented them to the person, then waited for them to respond and ... immediately had what I asked them to tell me published on the Internet?

I would think that such an action would hurt the value of the article that was to be published. Why should anyone buy a magazine because of an article on (insert name) if they could just go to that person's website and read the whole she-bang first hand from the person that was interviewed?

Magazines look for interview articles because it allows them to present their readership with an insight that may not be available anywhere else. Journalists carefully select questions that will provide them with something new, something that can not be found elsewhere, something that is worth putting up as a quote. What value is there in articles that have already had their most important segments, the insider questions and answers, published?

I'm still in shock that anyone would cut a journalist, and the publication they work for, off at the knees in that manner. I can see, as I said, a certain reason for publishing the information, but I can also see a reason to hold back on it and only publish it if the magazine actually prints something that does not fit with what you had said in the interview.

Give the journalist a little bit of credit and consider the old adage, "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me." Trust them. Let them prove to you that they are going to write something that fits what you said and not misquote you. If they prove to be untrustworthy then, and only then, consider publishing things to show the reporter took them out of context.

Like I said, it just struck a chord in me that it was something anyone would do, the fact that the person that did it should know better makes it all the worse. I'm talking about a piece I found on Jason Calacanis's blog titled Email with a journalist.... This post is a disclosure of the questions asked by the journalist and answers given by Calacanis. In his defense Calacanis states:

"I tell all journalists ahead of time that everything we talk about is not only on the record for THEM, but also for ME. I put almost every single interview on my blog. If folks want answers to questions they need to be willing for me to share those Q&As here with my readers. If either party doesn't like the terms we can opt out..."

He also has a post stating this on his blog - On my interview policy.... I looked around, from the perspective of a journalist interested in interviewing the man, and could not find any links to any such disclaimers in the contact information. I only found it by searching his back posts. So anyone that desires to interview Calacanis, for an assignment or whatever, should hope that in what they read on his blog includes the stipulation that their story will be leaked to the Internet before they pitch the story to their editor or a major magazine.

If they get the story assigned based on, "I can interview this guy," then find out that interviewing him means the heart of the article is leaked before they can even write about it -- well, it's a bit late to decide not to interview him. Huh? I think that journalists should be told up front, not after they contact him, that the heart of their story will be leaked to the Internet before they can write it.

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Update: Just an FYI update - trying to get as much feedback as I can on this topic, I submitted it to DIGG

2 comments:

Sandra said...

Thank you for the response. :) I sincerely appreciate your helping me in understanding the issue, but, I'm still not entirely sure that I see how it is fair to a journalist to scoop them on their own effort to present information.

Why not wait until the article is published and then put it on your site? What is gained by your posting the answers to the questions early as opposed to holding them until the article is published?

Sandra said...

I think you missed my questions.

1. Why not wait until the article is published and then put it on your site?

2. What is gained by your posting the answers to the questions early as opposed to holding them until the article is published?