Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog » Michael Arrington

TechCrunch decides to release confidential Twitter documents; ethical questions raised

Judith Townend — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 08:05:41 +0000

TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington is defending his decision to release private material, sent to them by a hacker ‘who claims to have accessed hundreds of confidential corporate and personal documents of Twitter and Twitter employees’.

” The zip file contained 310 documents, ranging from executive meeting notes, partner agreements and financial projections to the meal preferences, calendars and phone logs of various Twitter employees.”

While TechCrunch does not plan to use all the documents, where breaches to individuals’ privacy are made, it plans to release those which have significant – in its view – ‘news value’.

“[W]e are going to release some of the documents showing financial projections, product plans and notes from executive strategy meetings. We’re also going to post the original pitch document for the Twitter TV show that hit the news in May, mostly because it’s awesome,” writes Arrington.

“There is clearly an ethical line here that we don’t want to cross, and the vast majority of these documents aren’t going to be published, at least by us. But a few of the documents have so much news value that we think it’s appropriate to publish them.”

The debate commences below Arrington’s post, with both supportive and critical responses.

Many are outraged by TechCrunch’s decision. E.g Derek:

“It is STOLEN material, Michael! What on Earth are you on about… ‘ethical compass’?! What kind of ethics you subscribe to that allow for publishing stolen material, NOT of proper interest to the general public – but harmful to the one they were STOLEN from?”

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This post is embargoed until 12:55pm (GMT), Dec 18 2008

Laura Oliver — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 12:18:43 +0000

TechCrunch’s announcement that it will break every embargo it agrees to has caused something of a stir amongst PR and journo bloggers alike.

TC’s Michael Arrington explained the good, the bad and the ugly side of embargoed news releases:

“A lot of this news is good stuff that our readers want to know about. And we have the benefit of taking some time during the pre-briefing to think about the story, do research, and write it properly. When embargoes go right, we get to write a thoughtful story which benefits the company and our readers.

“But there’s a problem. All this stress on the PR firms put on them by desperate clients means they send out the embargoed news to literally everyone who writes tech news stories. Any blog or major media site, no matter how small or new, gets the email. It didn’t used to be this way, but it’s becoming more and more of a problem. As the economy turns south, PR firms are under increasing pressure to perform and justify their monthly retainers which range from $10,000 to $30,000 or more. In short, they have to spam the tech world to get coverage, or lose their jobs.”

Increased competition in the journalism industry is causing more and more embargoes to be broken, argues Arrington, creating ‘a race to the bottom by new sites’ and a climate in which, he says, TC can’t operate.

Certain ‘trusted’ companies and PR firms will continue to have their embargoes honoured by the site, but the hope is that by disregarding the rules firms will have to be more selective with who they break news to and clamp down on those repeat offenders breaking embargoes.

Arrington will also be posting a blacklist – now topped by TC – listing all firms and publications involved when an embargo is broken.

ReadWriteWeb has come back on Arrington’s decision, saying it will honour embargoes. While the site agrees that the press should get better at respecting them, RRW says embargoes give more outlets a chance to cover a story, providing multiple perspectives for readers.

“They give multiple blogs a chance to review a technology in depth, instead of making it a race (…) Embargoes lead to more total coverage than exclusives (…) Exclusives are the tactic of people with weak products and of reporters who compete better in bullying than in writing.”

Journalism.co.uk receives its fair share of embargoed news and releases – and has never knowingly broken any, because we want to cultivate good relations with tipsters, companies and PR firms.

This doesn’t mean we’ll cover everything that gets sent our way. We also know other journalism news sites will be getting much of the same info and agree this can make it more of a race to get the news out.

But from our perspective: we have two full-time journalists, so having good contacts with companies and PR is vital to our expanding our newsgathering.

However, as a twittered reply from @Daljit_Bhurji, founder of Diffusion PR, suggests, does the old-fashioned embargo model really work for online?

Reporting on our specialism – as I’m sure is the case with many other subject-specific publications – it’s increasingly apparent that the organisations/titles/companies we write about are becoming their own news sources. e.g. have their own press office, press release feed, blog/write about their own developments.

Sending an embargoed release about this info to us later isn’t a great help. Most of the time I’d rather learn about it if it’s covered in a blog-style like the BBC Editors blog or Guardian’s Inside blog.

We’re then free to dig deeper into that news if needs be and are given a direct line to the people behind it; or pass it on through another of our channels like Editors’ Pick.

Holding back the news tide with embargoes seems to go against the way information and news spreads online through links, official ‘leaks’ (as referred to above), blog networks etc.

What’s more it’s not just quote-unquote journalists covering news releases any more – is the industry expecting other writers and bloggers online to respect embargoes? It goes against the grain of the web.

Are embargoes redundant in the online age?

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The Inquisitr: ‘Arrington on journalism is like Britney Spears on parenting’, says Swisher

Laura Oliver — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 11:08:41 +0000

At this week's Demo Conference renowned Wall Street Journal technology columnist Kara Swisher attacked Tech Crunch's founder Michael Arrington: 'being lectured in journalism ethics by Michael Arrington is like getting parenting tips from Britney Spears'.

TechCrunch: Data portability is the new walled garden

Oliver Luft — Fri, 16 May 2008 11:55:20 +0000

Michael Arrington says the spat between Google and Facebook over the banning of Google’s Friend Connect is purely and simply about control of users and user information.

“Internet giants know that the days of getting you to spend all of your time inside their walled gardens are over,” he writes.

“So the next best thing is to at least maintain as much data about the user as possible, and make sure they identify with your brand while they are out there not being on your site.”

OpenID is becoming popular with developers as it allows users to log into sites with IDs taken from elsewhere – thus encouraging users not to move all their info wholesale.

Facebook and MySpace, he says, keep users happy and prevent them from moving all their personal info to other sites by allowing some portability so they don’t leave entirely.

“Not too portable, mind you.”

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Washingtonpost.com: WaPo signs up TechCrunch for online syndication deal

Oliver Luft — Mon, 12 May 2008 10:11:41 +0000

TechCrunch stories will now appear in the Washington Post website’s technology section as part of a syndication deal between the publishers.

“I think this is a good experiment for the Washington Post – adding new types of content to the site to retain reader interest, over and above their existing stories,” said TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington.

Currently no comments will be allowed on TechCrunch content on the WaPo site – something Arrington hopes will change in the future.

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