New York Times gets banned by World Health Org

THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION said it has banned the New York Times from its media distribution list after a reporter broke the embargo on one of its stories.

The story was about measles. The press release about banning the New York Times is not embargoed.

Said the WHO: "WHO takes embargoes very seriously." This is not a question. It continues: "Breaches are a violation of this code of honour among journalists and between reporters and their sources. The Organization will determine appropriate sanctions on a case-by-case basis."

Rightio. So this is how it works. Some orgs regularly put out info on an embargo basis - this we hacks and hackettes call a "diary story".

You are supposed to put the story in your diary and remember when you're allowed to write about it. If you work on a daily, it's very easy to forget when you're supposed to write about it.

An NDA is quite different, and as far as we know totally untested in a court of law. A firm - and by the way it's not just IT firms who do this - get you to sign up to a string of conditions and threatens you with all sorts of dire things if you breathe a word to anyone.

This is how the INQ plays embargoes. If someone sends us a press release that's embargoed, we either forget about it, or ask the PR bunny to send it to us the day it's not embargoed. We don't sign NDAs. µ