SST reveals One News poll results

The Sunday Star-Times has published what it believes to be the results of the One News Colmar Brunton poll, which will be on TV One tonight.

Unless done with the permission of TV One, this is somewhat unethical – akin to breaking an embargo on a press release. This is the second time TV One has had their poll results published in an alternate medium before they themselves broadcast. The last time it was TV Three, which really annoyed them.

It has been a long standing tradition that results of polls get known informally within the ‘beltway’ 24 to 48 hours before publication. This means you can get responses from parties (this can be left to a few hours before publication) and also journalists can prepare stories in advance, or even obliquely refer to the poll (eg “a poll out this weekend is expected to be more bad news ..”)

Funnily enough, as a blogger I once considered whether I could or should publish poll results as I hear them. I generally don’t get them directly from the news publisher, so could publish without retaliation. But I concluded it would be unfair to the news publisher who has commissioned and paid for the poll. It will be interesting to ascertain if the SST publication is done with or without the blessing of One News.

I find it interesting how I semi-automatically consider me bound by the normal journalistic conventions, even though I am not a journalist. As another example the Halberg awards are announced under embargo the morning of the evening broadcast. I could have blogged who the winners were, but again didn’t. But at some stage the whole concepts of embargoes and the Internet may prove to be incompatible.