Sharing newspaper articles could get you into real trouble | Lis McDermott
If any of you have appeared in a local newspaper, national newspaper, national magazine, or even a nationally sold niche magazine and shared online on your social media, a picture of the article, then delete the image asap!
My best friend, Fiona Scott, is a journalist/ PR person, and recently someone has been has been asked to pay £5,000 for the use of seven articles on his social media, six of which were for his local newspaper when he took part in features. He shared an image of the actual article, not an online link. As Fiona says, this is totally ridiculous, however very real.
There is a body called the NLA (National Licensing Association) to which most newspapers and magazines belong. They are even going after small businesses for sharing articles. The client that has been fined; they trawled back through his social media for 5 years.
This is having a huge impact on journalists and PR people, as this is part of what they do; sharing their clients appearing in magazines etc, and encouraging their clients to do the same. Even the newspapers and magazines encourage you to share, and yet they have also signed up to the NLA!
The journalists/PR people are taking legal advice and have also requested a meeting with their local MPs.
I spent most of one Saturday trawling through all of my social media profiles deleting images. If you go to a past post and open it, at the bottom of the image there are several options. If you click on that you can delete the image, but the post remains.
This isn’t a scam, it is real.
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