The absurdity of embargoes

This Halloween I was visited by a demon that has haunted me for decades. It was brought to mind by this Tweet from Tom Foremski, an old pro from the Financial Times: "Are there new rules for embargoes? I'm not sure if there are..."

If there's one subject that will always elicit a frothing response from me, along with politics and sports, it's embargoes. Whether it's the kind that restricts news or bans Cuban cigars, I would rise from my deathbed to vilify either atrocity.

Unfortunately, my expertise in international trade is limited to my eBay account, but I do know something about the media version. So much so, in fact, that I have been blamed personally for the ridiculous notion of "breaking embargoes on the Internet."

After I helped found News.com at CNET Networks in 1996, one of my responsibilities as managing editor was to codify our operating principles. It was early in the online news game, so stuff like linking, privacy, cyber-ethics, and "Netiquette" was virgin territory. One of the issues was embargoes.

Our policy was simple: We did not agree to them, except for extraordinary circumstances. And for doing this, News.com became a poster child for the perceived recklessness of online media at the time.

Let me say this for the record, in no uncertain terms: An embargo can be considered violated only if the recipient agrees to it in the first place.

For some reason, many companies and government agencies seem to think that simply receiving so-called embargoed material automatically means you have agreed to it--even if you never knew the information existed, let alone had consented to any restrictions, before it landed in your inbox or mailroom unsolicited.

It would be the equivalent of my mass-emailing a contract to sell my house for $10 million, then holding its recipients to the provisions of the "agreement." When they rightly tell me to go pound salt, I would cry foul and claim that they broke the rules.

Because News.com did not agree to embargoes, therefore, their restrictions did not apply to us. It's impossible to "break" a contract you never agreed to.

My objection to the concept began in the Washington Bureau of the Los Angeles Times in the 1980s, when government agencies routinely placed embargoes on information for no reason other than mindless bureaucratic process. After I expressed my dismay at the practice, a colleague told me a story about my then-boss, the national editor, Norman Miller.

When Miller was D.C. bureau chief of the Wall Street Journal years earlier, he found it ludicrous that the White House embargoed the federal budget in a post-Watergate capital known as much for its news leaks as it was for the Washington Monument and Marion Barry's crack pipe.

Half of his reporters had agreed to the embargo, while the other half didn't. You can guess what ensued--beat writers avoiding investigative reporters, staffers trying to eavesdrop on coffee-room chatter, leaks reported by some that got their co-workers in trouble. The frustrated Miller, as the story goes, just decided to break the embargo and run with the full budget report, to the outrage of the administration.

(Full disclosure: I never attempted to confirm the story with Miller for fear that he might debunk it, and I've been telling it ever since. But if you knew Miller, a former Navy prosecutor who won a Pultizer in the 1960s for exposing a huge scandal in commodities trading, you'd have no reason to doubt its veracity.)

Yes, I have heard all the reasons that ostensibly justify embargoes: giving everyone equal access, providing enough time to digest information and ask questions, etc. But to my mind, the only restrictions that hold any water involve national security, as in arrangements for Pentagon "pool reporting" or journalists embedded with troops on the front line. An embargo on a product release doesn't exactly rise to that level.

What makes far more sense in this age of equal opportunity for content is for companies to write and publish the news themselves in accurate and accessible stories, as opposed to the stilted and jargon-laden format of traditional press releases. If companies are truly concerned about accuracy and equal access, why not simply do it right the first time and release the information to the world simultaneously, with no restrictions?

Even if the previous arguments for embargoes were legitimate, they're at best obsolete. In the ethos of the web, as we should all know by now, nothing is off-limits. Besides, as my Beltway experience illustrates, I learned early in my career that the real motive for imposing embargoes is to retain as much control over the news as possible--just for the sake of doing so, not for any logical or practical reasons.

As for my being blamed personally for all this, it occurred most recently when I met an executive of a national PR agency last year. Upon learning that I worked for CNET, the first thing he asked was: "Why do you break embargoes?" The exasperation of my reply matched the impertinence of his question.

Bottom line: If you are a PR professional or a government communications officer who insists on trying to control the timing of information, do not send it unless you are sure that the recipient has a policy to agree to embargoes. Then contact your targeted reporters and bloggers directly and discuss the specific provisions.

But my advice is not to bother trying. And if your bosses won't budge on the subject, use this post to show what veteran journalists think of embargoes and why they're unnecessary.