An embargo is actually simply a way for an organization with something newsworthy to ensure that multiple news organizations are able to cover the news. There are a lot of news publications now, and lots of places that have something newsworthy. It's not possible for everyone to organize press conferences where all the reporters show up at once and write down the story as they hear it.
So, instead, the embargo is just a practical method to allow a slightly slower release of news, without too much unfairness to different press organizations.
For example, a company may be about to release a new product. They want to contact about 30 news organizations to let them know about the product, show the product to them, etc. So the company rep gets on a plane, and flies to meet the different journalists over a course of a week or two. They show them the product, talk about it, etc, under the condition that the journalist doesn't publish anything until a certain date -- the same date as everybody else.
The journalist is free to not follow the embargo. Indeed, sometimes the news is so important that the journalist decides to break the embargo. However, remember -- they only got to learn the news early because the company shared it with them. If they didn't agree to the embargo in the first place, they would have found out about the product _after_ everyone else who was under the embargo already published their articles. Indeed, if a journalist breaks embargo, they sometimes get "blacklisted" by the company whose product it was -- next time, they won't be on the list of journalists the company talks to beforehand. Sometimes this is worth the risk for the journalist, but for most routine situations it's really not.
The embargo system isn't perfect. In the case of political events of high importance, embargo is simply unfair: a press conference makes more sense, so everybody learns about it at once. However, in the normal course of events, it solves the problem of having to inform many journalists at once, and letting them have a day or more to do their research and get their balanced articles going, without the fear that they'll be scooped by someone else.
-ilya
On Mon, May 19, 2008 at 9:02 AM, divol jacques.divol@laposte.net wrote:
Le 19 mai 08 à 17:40, Paul Williams a écrit :
embargo or "media blackout"
are very bad.
I do not know who create this mechanism and why journalists'ld follow this rule.
I know "embargo" exists as i fall upon one time or two (i am not a professional journalist) and very surprised each time.
Franckly, i don't understand how "freedom of press" and embargo could exist both.
For exemple, in France, when there's a vote, no one should know the results before the end of the ballote, but journalists (and politics, friends and famillies) know, why ?, because "embargo"? (not good english i am sorry)
For me, Wikinews 'ld find his/her way outside this strange way to do press and news : embargo or "media blackout"
we already have "Flags", it's enought
no border for knowledge, please. no social or profesional border for Knowledge, please
jacques divol (i hope i am not off topic) _______________________________________________ Wikinews-l mailing list Wikinews-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikinews-l