Reporters new to the politics beat are often shocked -- shocked -- to find their stories re-purposed as campaign ads. It happens all the time, on television ads and in printed fliers.
Reporters' objections are understandable. When favorable stories about a political candidate are used by a campaign or a political action committee to generate support, or when the opposition uses negative stories to tear down a candidate, it compromises the perception that the reporter and the newsroom are independent.
Most newsrooms have reprint policies that dictate who can obtain copyright permissions, what they can do with reprints and how much they have to pay. Given the perception problem, when it comes to political stories, why don't newsrooms refuse to grant permission to people who seek to use content for campaign purposes?
A recent case in Indiana shows just how hard that would be. Last September,
Daily Herald columnist Amy Mack published a
column detailing how the McHenry County State's Attorney had billed taxpayers $17,000 for sweets.
In November and December, someone anonymously mailed 900 copies of the column to residents in the area. Mack wrote a
column telling readers she didn't send out the mailing.
Last week, a competing newspaper, the
Northwest Herald, got to the
bottom of things. It turns out the Republican Party Chairman Bill LeFew paid $400 of his own money to the
Daily Herald to reprint and distribute the column. He did so, he said, to inform voters who might participate in an upcoming primary. He claims he was acting as a private citizen, using his own funds. He gained the permission through an online link on the paper's website.
Political interests on all sides directed their anger at the paper for allowing the column to be used.
Here are my questions: How could newsrooms limit reprints? Should they require those seeking reprints to refrain from using them in political ads? Is that legal? Would that have stopped the distribution in this case?
Or, is it better to be liberal with reprint requests? Would it leave newsrooms open to more charges of bias if they had to determine if a use was political? Are there any newsrooms out there that successfully limit use of their material in campaign ads?
One small thing – both the Northwest Herald and the...
