Marketing for scientists<\/a> has an interview<\/a> with NYT science reporter Dennis Overbye<\/a>. In response to a question about whether science reporters can be manipulated, Overbye responded:<\/p>\n

The easiest way to manipulate the press is to embargo some result and then send a press release about it to a thousand different news organizations.\u00a0\u00a0They will cover it because they are afraid everyone else will cover it.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s a kind of artificial competition that\u2019s stirred up.<\/p>\n

It does two things.\u00a0\u00a0By embargoing the information it makes it harder to get an informed opinion on the paper.\u00a0\u00a0It put you at the mercy of time.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0And you whip up competition between news organizations.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0You have to have your story ready to go online the instant the embargo ends.<\/p>\n

You will see that every story has a little note after it with the time that the story came out so you can see who was first, who was a few minutes late with it.\u00a0\u00a0For some people this constitutes bragging rights\u2014-in terms of business news it\u2019s not so silly.\u00a0\u00a0So there\u2019s a deadline\u2014-you\u2019ve got to have something to say.\u00a0\u00a0Your access to informed opinion may be limited.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Scientists complain all the time that reporters don’t take the time to understand the science in what they are writing about, and are just eager to get a story out quickly. But I think Overbye hits the nail on the head – just another reason to do away with embargoed press releases in science.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Marketing for scientists has an interview with NYT science reporter Dennis Overbye. In response to a question about whether science reporters can be manipulated, Overbye responded: The easiest way to manipulate the press is to embargo some result and then send a press release about it to a thousand different news organizations.\u00a0\u00a0They will cover it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[26,79],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaeleisen.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaeleisen.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaeleisen.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaeleisen.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaeleisen.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=355"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaeleisen.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":356,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaeleisen.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355\/revisions\/356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaeleisen.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaeleisen.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaeleisen.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}