Business Wire's article...
New Technologies Have Created Problems of Ticker Spamming:
Whose Job is it to censure the news?
by Cathy Baron Tamraz
For years, the public has complained about the government and the media controlling the information we see. What we see on the nightly news, what we read in the daily newspaper and what hear on all-news radio has traditionally been filtered information controlled by the media, major networks and government spokespersons.
The New York Times' famous slogan, "All the news that's fit to print" addressed the news that the editorial board of the Times deemed fit to print. That was not necessarily the same as all the news that could impact your life or your pocketbook or was what you most wanted to read. With the advent of the Internet suddenly information was unfiltered, unedited and unanalyzed. Truly, all the news now had a forum for public view. Like anything, this has created a scenario where the cup is both half full and half empty. In other words, while the Internet can level the information playing field by empowering investors with valuable information with the click of a mouse, it can also provide them with too much information or fraudulent and misleading information - also with the click of a mouse.
The Internet has created a whole new world, whereby the masses now have access to raw, unedited material. A wealth of information has become available instantly to everyone. Those editors that used to interpret the raw data and "make sense" of it for newspapers, television and radio do not exist on the Internet. The burden of responsibility has shifted to the user and that is a big responsibility that should not be taken lightly.
While we have so much more information available to us, several problems have emerged particularly with regard to those individuals making investment, decisions based on information they read on the Internet. The challenge is how to decipher and interpret the myriad information available via the net. Further, should a commercial news service, such as Business Wire, control which ticker symbols appear in a news release and thus control the hot-linking and indexing by Internet Portals?
As a news dissemination service, where do we draw the line in terms of what information is permitted in a news release? Are we to take on the role of the SEC or the regulatory agencies? The fact is, the ticker spamming dilemma was non-existent prior to the explosion of the Internet. New technology is at the heart of this matter. As such, it seems to make sense that the burden of deciding appropriate hyper-links should rest with those doing the actual linking.
Business Wire has addressed the issue of hyper-linking on its own wire and home page.
We've had a firm policy on ticker symbols for the past 38 years. Only the issuing company may list its ticker symbol in a story headline, except for releases involving mergers and other joint actions. That gives the reader a firm indicator as to
who is issuing the news. Furthermore, on Business Wire's home page, we only hyper-link from the issuing company's ticker symbol that appears in the company's headline.
Any other ticker symbols that appear in the body of the release are there for "public relations' purposes and should be regarded as such by the reader. For example, if a high tech company is talking about products that are similar to another technology company's and it wants to name the other company and include its ticker (which is
public information); Business Wire would accept those symbols in the news release.
As Internet providers index Business Wire copy based on headline tickers only, this problem of "ticker spamming' will virtually disappear. In fact, Business Wire has been in discussion with many of the Internet portals that are also confronted with ticker spamming and, together, we have implemented formatting procedures that will provide relevant indexing and hot-linking on the web.
However, unless we are officially named the "Internet Police", Business Wire generally declines to edit out ticker symbols provided by corporations that are paying us to disseminate their news, not only to the Internet, but to disclosure media, daily newspapers, trade publications, databases/online services and the investment community.
We look to the SEC, the stock exchanges and other regulatory agencies to provide firmer "style" guidelines for companies to follow when issuing a news release.
Business Wire sees its role as providing broad dissemination of information to the widest audience possible. In that role, there is little room for restriction, other than outright rejection of news releases deemed inappropriate. That we have always done and we will continue to do.
Cathy Baron Tamraz, based in New York City, is executive vice president and a member of the company's executive board. She is responsible for sales, strategic planning and day-to-day operations for Business Wire.
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GB
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