PennPIRG, the national public-interest group's Pennsylvania state chapter, whose director is James Browning, has sent out a statement asserting that a national study of state-government Web sites reveals "how far Pennsylvania lags behind the forefront of this national trend."
Not that we're huge fans of the site and haven't cursed it from time to time, but this seemed excessive. So we looked at the report by a PIRG-sympathetic group called Good Jobs First, and we see that Pennsylvania actually got a better grade than most other states. It ranks not below the national trend, but above it by a healthy margin. (See page 3-4 in this summary). Pennsylvania and New Jersey had average scores of 73 percent each, tied for 12th place among 50 states, while the national average was 60 percent. OK, all the states' may stink in their online offerings and disclosures of contracts and lobbying. But even by that standard, Pennsylvania and New Jersey stank less than most others in the group's study.
Then we wondered why PIRG dissed Pennsylvania so erroneously. We dug around and discovered that PennPIRG’s press release was actually a boilerplate document used almost word-for-word by at least two other chapters, MarylandPIRG and Massachusetts PIRG. Each press release uses the same "lag" wording. And the three we read even used the same quotation -- "Transparency is necessary to keep a watchful eye on the public purse" -- attributed to three different people: PennPIRG's Browning, MassPIRG legislative director Deirdre Cummings, and MarylandPIRG policy advocate Johanna Neumann. The PennPIRG version didn't even bother to change the Browning's pronoun from "she" to "he" in his quote.
We left a phone message for Browning today but he hasn't returned it yet.
This "boilerplating" or "cookie-cutting" of news releases seems to be getting more common. It may be cost-efficient for P.R. agencies trying to kill several birds with one stone, so to speak. But do they think reporters won't realize it? Or that it doesn't matter? We've said it before and we’ll say it again: It hurts your credibility and your message.
