I am a friend to the press. I do everything I can when asked to comment on a story, point in the direction of who to talk to at other companies or help clarify facts when needed. I understand that they have a need to write about stuff, and it helps them and us to get involved with them. I also write articles for a fair number of pubs and happily do so as I feel it helps the whole category that we work in.
But I hate when they just do things wrong.
Case in point. A journalist calls me because he happened to run into someone on our team doing a projection campaign in Philadelphia. He is interested, the gentleman working the projector gives him my information. We end up talking, I give him information on the specific campaign, send him photos of that and past jobs and then a short interview. He asks if he can speak to the projectionist, I give him the contact. Etc. etc.
So fast forward a month and the article comes out (which I only know because random people start sending us email about it, not because I get the courtesy of a note from the author that the article came out). So I go and look and just see it chock full of errors. The most egregious one is that I spend all the time talking to the guy, giving him all this stuff, and then he writes all about Interference Inc. and such and then refers to me as 'Sam Ewen, chief executive of another innovative marketing company, Interface...' ? ? ?
You can't even make the connection that the company you are writing about, that the person that helped you with the article, also happens to own said company and that you reached him because you had seen his campaign that INTERFERENCE did?
Obviously Fact Checking is dead. If this was a small little pub, it would be one thing, but it is a large news service and wire from France and one would like the info to be correct. Ok. Rant ended.
You can read the article here if you want.
Have a nice day.
Sam from Interface.
UPDATE: I guess bitching works! They changed the article.
