What LEGALLY has to happen to call yourself a news service?

[liveoaktx]

Nothing? Can I go out right now and set up a website and call myself the Felon, oops, I mean Teflon News Service, take press releases and regurgitate? Will that finally satisfy my deep lifelong resentment against the AP/Reuters/etc LOCK on valid news and I will achieve my place in the sun as a respected entity?

Seems to me if one incorporates, for example, you can't just up and put News into your corporation name, at least in Texas.

[Eric J in MN]

1. Yes, you can call yourself a news service. However,

there are standards for who is supposed to get one of the limited number of seats at a White House press conference, like whether you have paid subscribers and/or paid advertising.


On Edit: if you have a question about incorporating in the state of Texas, I know nothing about that.

[liveoaktx]

2. Not a Texas question but rather a *news service* nomenclature one

Somebody calls him or herself a doctor and diagnoses people, but doesn't do it under the auspices of the AMA.
Somebody says *I'm an engineer" when they really are the garbage collector, ie, sanitation engineer.
At one point in Texas, software engineers who did technical support for a certain large company were told not to call themselves engineers anymore because they were not college-degreed to do so.

What I'm really saying is, AP says "I'm a news service". Is there NOTHING in place that sets standards to define what is or isn't a news service? If not, then AP, etc, except for marketing and commerce connections, deserve no more respect than a lowly website that pushes out info.

[Eric J in MN]

3. Taking those one at a time,

A disk jockey can call himself "Doctor Demento" as long as he doesn't represent himself as a medical doctor.

With regard to software engineers in Texas, I don't know the specific case you're talking about, but it probably has to do with federal contracts.

For the federal govt. to pay a contractor for their "software engineers" they may need to meet certain educational standards.

People in general can call themselves "software engineers" unless it is in the context of govt. contract which they don't meet the standards for.

You can write news stories and send them to reporters with the phrase "Liveoaktx News Service" on top.

With regard to the laws of incorporating though, I don't know anything about that.

[liveoaktx]

4. So it's really Caveat Emptor-If there are hundreds of *news services*

around the country that each purport to be putting out news, the ONLY thing that can help out the casual reader is to investigate the background of each news service, because there are no standards otherwise.

I don't mean to get you off on a side-track-I don't care about incoporation-I only cited it because, at least in TX, you CAN'T put News into your company name just because you want to.

[Eric J in MN]

6. Yes. AP and Reuters have a history of being accurate most of

the time, but if there is a new "News Service" you should be skeptical until when-and-if it earns trust.

UPI was purchased by the Reverend Sun Moon, and so I'm more skeptical of UPI stories than AP or Reuters stories.

[Eric J in MN]

5. For more information about this,

you could write the Environment News Service.

http://www.ens-newswire.com/about.asp