ProfNet exposed -- be careful!
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review columnist Dave Copeland says reporters rely too much on experts "who can state their pre-determined opinion for them” and thus publishes on his blog: "As a service to readers ...I'm starting a new feature where I'll be posting actual ProfNet queries from actual journalists. This is your chance to read the news before it's news!" The query he posts is one from Fox News Channel's Elisa Cho asking for experts to "speak about the 'liberal bias' at college campuses."
ProfNet is an excellent service that helps journalists find sources – the service is not the problem Copeland is targeting, really – it's journalists' misuse of experts. And he makes a valid point at that.
Though his posting ProfNet queries online is a violation of ProfNet's terms of service and could potentially undermine the usefulness of the service.
Dan Forbush, president of Profnet, tells Dan Gillmor:
"Our members are contractually obligated to maintain the confidentiality of reporters' queries. In this case, it appears that one of our members -- disturbed by the phrasing of a query from a reporter -- violated our conditions of membership and forwarded the query to another reporter.
"Going as they do to as many as 11,000 news and information officers, ProfNet Search queries unfortunately are vulnerable to improper forwarding. We're upfront with reporters about this, advising them to frame their queries in a way that does not divulge the proprietary focus of their story. If that's not possible, we encourage reporters to "cloak" their queries so as to sharply limit the number of members with whom they share their name, the name of their news organization, and their contact information.”
Journalists who don't want their story ideas stolen should consider using ProfNet's cloaking option (or just searching the Profnet database of experts, though that tends to be less efficient). Here's more info on ProfNet's cloaking option.
May 24, 2004 | E-MAIL | SAVE | PRINT | PERMALINK | DISCUSS(1)
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1 comments about 'ProfNet exposed -- be careful!'Thanks for "getting" it.
Posted by Cope at May 25, 2004 2:59 PM
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