Government “press releases” published directly to Facebook prompt the press to dig deeper

by Michael Robinson |Uvalde Hesperian

Top Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

02-22-26

  Many elected officials as well as local government entities and law enforcement officials and other agencies often post their respective “press releases” directly to their respective Facebook pages.

  Occasionally one of these will contact the Uvalde Hesperian and ask if their “press release” could be copied and pasted and run as an article on the Uvalde Hesperian news website?  As the publisher of the Uvalde Hesperian, the answer with some rare exceptions, will generally be “No”.

  Some government officials and politicians find it easier to bypass both traditional and digital news media and just share on their Facebook pages.

  While this is an option, for sure, Facebook is a for-profit quasi-government platform and a “press release” or “news release” becomes a newsletter article for followers or fans.

  The Uvalde Hesperian and other serious news outlets strive to publish original news content or news releases specifically for the press. You will see some of the latter published on the Uvalde Hesperian.

  If something is published on Facebook first, then every other news outlet is an afterthought. 

  As for individuals who contact the Uvalde Hesperian and say, ” I published something really good on my Facebook page, can you run it? Again, with a few exceptions, the answer is “No.”

  While in the past, The Hesperian has published complete content from Facebook, it will not anymore.

  Social media has made actual news reporting outlets work much harder to generate authentic news and also as a place for actual press releases meant for the press and the general public rather than affinity groups that follow said political and/or government entities.

  While Facebook pages do reach a lot of people, “news” shared only on specific Facebook pages, such news does not reach a wide audience.

  Many news reporting outlets view political/government or agency Facebook posts as a prompt to dig deeper and ask hard questions and expand the topic adding more information.

The public has access to more information than ever before, but curated news directly published to Facebook, X, or TikTok by government agencies and officials is news published with an official filter. 

It is and has always been the calling of news reporting outlets to dig deeper and ask, “What is really going on here?”