NY Times breaks embargo, WHO makes it public
Posted by Evan Fell on December 4, 2007 at 12:28 PM
The World Health Organization (WHO) has suspended the New York Times from its media distribution list for two weeks after the newspaper broke an embargo on a story about measles deaths.
''WHO communications staff have been asked not to brief any New York Times reporters during this period on any stories that are scheduled to be released through the WHO email distribution list,'' according to an e-mail from the WHO.
The New York times will most likely figure out a way to report on the WHO without the embargoed material, and if not, its only a two week period.
The surprising part of all of this? The publicity it has attracted. Many journals do the same thing when news organizations break embargos, but many didn't even say what publication had committed the break, don’t mention the punishment, and certainly don’t send out a special message whose only purpose was to inform journalists about the punishment.
''Breaches are a violation of this code of honour among journalists and between reporters and their sources,'' said the WHO.
Ivan Oransky, a blogger at The Scientist said, “Perhaps it's time to revisit whom this ''code of honour'' is serving. If it's not the reading public, it may be time for embargoes to go."
Source: The Scientist through Poynter Institute Romenesko
The New York times will most likely figure out a way to report on the WHO without the embargoed material, and if not, its only a two week period.
The surprising part of all of this? The publicity it has attracted. Many journals do the same thing when news organizations break embargos, but many didn't even say what publication had committed the break, don’t mention the punishment, and certainly don’t send out a special message whose only purpose was to inform journalists about the punishment.
''Breaches are a violation of this code of honour among journalists and between reporters and their sources,'' said the WHO.
Ivan Oransky, a blogger at The Scientist said, “Perhaps it's time to revisit whom this ''code of honour'' is serving. If it's not the reading public, it may be time for embargoes to go."
Source: The Scientist through Poynter Institute Romenesko
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I dont think murdoch realizes that WSJ.com has long standing agrements with partners like Congoo.com, Factiva.com, Lexis Nexis and others. Making the site free would put these agreement in breach and they would have to pay.