How do you tell the difference between a news plant and a news leek and how do you spot them.
The onion smell would tip you off to the leek.
Milton is right, leek is a plant. For instance, today I had leek and potato soup.
Maybe the leek is the news plant.
Media guy, here.
It can be difficult to tell the difference between a plant and a leak. Sometimes a leak is a plant and vice-versa.
The easiest (but not foolproof) way to tell is to look at the attribution to the story. If someone is ‘on background’ or ‘anonymous’ there’s a shot it’s a leak. Usually news plants are handled by flacks.
Throw in the fact that leaks can be positive or negative and it gets all confusing.
Why do you want to know? Got a story for me?
Whooooo! This thread was surreal through the first four posts…Jonathan Chance cleared it all up, though. Good job.
In related news, I scooped a story for my college paper (ok, so I didn’t write the thing, but I tipped them off…) last night. Pretty interesting, I think, at least on campus here. What is it? Can’t tell you until it comes out in tomorrow’s paper.
That’s a good feeling, isn’t it?
Most definitely. Though I think it’s probably better when it comes about through hard work, research, and phone calls, a 'la All the President’s Men. Mine was %100 dumb luck.
Either way, news is news.
No, feels good either way. Trust me. Especially if you’re laying the smackdown on someone who needs it.
Wait, so, what are the differences between a plant and a leak? I’m not restating the OP; I don’t know what the terms mean.
Heh. Well, not quite with this one.
An earlier big news thing this year happened though:
Seems our newspaper office got a call at about 1 in the afternoon from a paper or TV station up in Indy asking if we could confirm that IU President Myles Brand was resigning. Whoever took the call thought, “WTF?!?!?” and immediately got on it, calling sources and figuring out generally what the heck was going on.
Our deadline is midnight (for the paper to go to press, not for stories).
By midnight, we had, I think, two or three frontpage stories, an editorial, a column or two, and a nice big graphical center spread with features of his presidency. It was a good paper. It was the best coverage of that issue of any paper I saw, at least, including the Indy Star.
I was designing the Sports section that night, and let me tell you, the newsroom was pretty busy.
OK…
A news plant is a story that someone (usually a flack) tries to get media outlets to run. Usually the person planting isn’t shy about having their name mentioned.
A ‘leak’ is usually something a person or organization wants a reporter to go after when it fits a specific agenda.
Examples:
Plant:
Al Gore rescues Greyhounds. In an exclusive (HA!) interview he urged all American’s to rescue them.
This would be planted by Gore’s flacks with the goal of getting him out there in the news.
Leak:
GWB likes biting the heads off baby pigeons.
This would be ‘leaked’ by Gore’s team (usually not flacks but higher up) to discredit GWB.
Leaks generally require more work. The reporter or editor would have to get independent (or not…if you’re Fox News) confirmation of facts.
Plants usually have all the information right there, conveniently arranged for the reporters ease-of-use.
Note, though…if Gore didn’t want to blow his own horn he could have someone ‘leak’ the Greyhound story. It might then read:
The XYZ Paper has learned that Al Gore is adopting Greyhounds.
That means the paper has to find corrobarating info and then run it. But usually they HATE positive leaks. They know someone is trying to manipulate them. Sometimes they still have to go with it, though.
Or a real world example:
Right now Gore is hitting all the damn media outlets in the world regarding this book Tipper and he have written. Good enough. He mentions the 2000 election and campaign fairly often but won’t say he’s running.
His Chief of Staff or someone, however, tells all editors who will listen that of COURSE he’s running! But he tells them that on background or completely off the record. That let’s Gore not commit to anything but still fuels the stories about his soon to be playing in theaters comeback special event.
In which case we have a ‘leak’ which is also a ‘plant’.
Okay, it sounds like in both cases there’s some party separate from the media that wants the media to run a story, not because it’s newsworthy per se, but for their own agenda.
And in plants, they want to be associated with the story, and in leaks, they don’t.
Your last example confused me slightly. Did you mean the 2004 election?
I think that’s definitely right as to plants. Leaks may be motivated by an agenda, or they may be motivated by real altruism.
–Cliffy
Well, I’d say that altruism is still an ‘agenda’ per se.
Yes, I meant the 2004 election.