At 8:50 this evening, CJAD, 800 on your AM dial, reported that John Edwards accepted the party nomination and recounted what he said in his speech. Only problem: It’s now 9:50 and Edwards has yet to give his speech. Apparently, Canadian Press jumped the gun with the transcript – explicitly embargoed – circulated by the Democratic PR folks, and CJAD ran with it.

Not surprisingly, it made the top listing at Google News.

Foolish, naive blogger boy! 53 years young and I didn’t know that real journalists ignore the explicit embargo. For example, the NY Times site also ran an article about the speech before the speech, although they said “in remarks prepared for delivery” (The CP article skips the qualification.) But don’t you usually see that locution in print articles that had to be put to bed before the event actually transpired? What’s the ethical justification of running embargoed news in real time on your web site?

Sheesh. All part of the weird set of conventions that constitute delivering the “news” in a “timely” way..

Categories: Uncategorized dw