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What’s the matter with mat stories? Quite a bit, in the absence of full disclosure. We talk about the different approaches to mat stories taken by the two largest providers in North America, NAPs in the United States and News Canada north of the border. We talk about where the responsibility for disclosure resides and we see that there may be failings at all three points in the news chain, PR agencies, mat distributors and publishers.
We also look at Facebook’s curious performance during and after its testimony before a Canadian Parliamentary Committee. Called to testify about its privacy policies, Facebook’s spokesperson first told Parliamentarians that Facebook has its own interpretation of Canadian lobbying laws. An interpretation that resulted in Facebook having no lobbyist registration, despite the fact that Facebook was on record having meetings with several Cabinet Ministers. Curious, said the NDP’s Charlie Angus. But, there’s more. To top it off, Facebook, the distribution platform on which many Canadians receive their news, refused to take any questions from reporters. This, even thought the reporters accompanied Facebook’s Canadian rep down three stories from the Committee hearings to the building exit where he could finally flee them.
Actions speak loudly. And the failure to disclose fully speaks volumes.
Linkworthy
Mat stories
CBC’s Kelly Crowe’s take: Health Canada’s ‘Fake News’? It’s not fake, but it’s not news either
The original story CBC levered off: Blacklock News, Feds’ Fake News Cost $577K
Find the disclosure: News Canada’s home page and About Us page
NAPS site for advertisers is different from its site for publishers
Facebook Canada does a Faceplant
Reuters exclusive: Facebook to put 1.5 billion users out of reach of new EU privacy law
Video: Charlie Angus questions Kevin Chan about Facebook’s failure to register its Canadian lobbying activities and move of users out of reach of GDPR
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Our theme music was created by Damon de Szegheo; Roger Dey is our announcer. Inside PR is produced by Joseph Thornley.
Going to the Mat[tresses] by Joseph Thornley, Gini Dietrich, Martin Waxman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.