What You Need to Know About Talking to a Reporter

Your responsibilities:

• To provide information that's accurate.  It's much better to say "I don't know" than to guess.
• To understand the ground rules before an interview begins.
• To report errors promptly to an editor or reporter for the news organization that made them.

You have the right to:

• Be quoted accurately and in appropriate context.
• Say "I don't want to talk"
• Say "I don't have that information in front of me.  Let me get back to you."
• End an interview by asking: Tell me what you heard me say."

A reporter's responsibilities are to:

• Be accurate, fair and balanced and to seek different points of view.
• Make guidelines clear before an interview.
• Make his/her deadlines.
• Report inaccuracies and problems to his/her editor.

A reporter can NOT:

• Write headlines or decide when or where a story runs.
• Make promised that bind his/her news organization without consulting his/her editors.
• Show you a story before it runs.

Information provided by: