Eat The Press

Much Ado About Logo

Posted Friday April 20, 2007 at 05:30 PM

The discussion over NBC's use of Cho Seung-Hui's packaged materials has started to turn from the question of whether airing the videos and photos was in good or bad taste into a more internecine debate over branding and what constitutes an exclusive.

When NBC distributed Cho's images, they came with a laundry list on instructions: "No Internet use. No archival use. Do not resell...Mandatory credit; NBC News." But NBC took things a step further. Rather than relying on trust, NBC placed their logo on every piece of the material, ensuring they got a piece of the credit whenever the images were used or aired. There's at least one person who feels that this action on NBC's part constituted an ethical violation.

In a letter to Romenesko, David Hanners of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, questioned NBC's decision at length. Referencing the "Allan Detrich...imbroglio", Hanners expounds:

1) Since it was wrong for Detrich (and anyone else) to alter a photo, why isn't it wrong for NBC News to alter these photos by pasting its logo on them? At least Detrich acted out of some misguided desire to improve the "art" of his photos. NBC News did it for branding reasons, like product-placement in some movie. Isn't it enough to credit NBC in the credit line of the photo? What would happen if we started sticking our paper's logo in the background of every photo we ran?

2) If the photo was distributed by NBC News with the network's logo on it, is it wrong for a paper to remove it? Or is removing it considered ok since it is returning the photo to its "original," unadulterated form, i.e., the way it looked when Cho took the picture and before NBC News got hold of it?

It seems that in the interest of consistency, we should be getting on someone's case for altering the Cho photo. We should either be criticizing NBC News for plastering its peacock on the photo, or we should be railing against the other paper for removing the logo.

Paul Friedman, the Vice President of CBS News, also thought the decision to brand the images was unwise, but for a different reason: "It may backfire for them to be so closely associated with footage that makes people's flesh crawl." If branding is a double-edged sword, that's a serious cut.

But, it may not be Friedman's unkindest cut. In relating his opinion to the New York Times, Friedman cited the lack of "enterprise reporting" in questioning whether any of the material, which NBC "picked up in its mailroom" could even fairly be called an exclusive.

RELATED:
"Why isn't wrong for NBC to alter Cho images?" [Romenesko]
NBC News Defends Its Use of Material Sent by the Killer [The New York Times]

(Ed. Two cents: Friedman's branding-association point is a good one, but the exclusivity point is idiotic. Even if NBC tripped over it on the street, if only they have it, it's an exclusive. That's what the word means. Did CNN do any "enterprise reporting" for Jamal Albarghouti's cellphone video? Of course not — they were just where he happened to send it. How about the Suri Cruise exclusive that kicked off Katie Couric's first broadcast? What "enterprise reporting" did CBS do for that? Friedman can criticize NBC's coverage on the merits, but this kind of silly cheap shot smacks of sour grapes. Never mind that it's pretty rich to get on a high horse about exclusivity two weeks after your network has admitted to running a piece that had been blatantly plagiarized. - RS)