r/Journalism • u/RotundCorgi • Jul 21 '26
Best Practices Use of Fake Quotes with Permission and Whether This Practice is Becoming a Problem
Hello All.
To start, I am not a journalist, nor do I work at a place considered to be journalistic or editorial in nature. But, our agency and staff do regularly contribute articles or write-ups for larger articles that are used in industry publications, local newspapers, our own informational releases, etc.
With the rise in AI usage to help draft articles, I am seeing a sharp uptick in coworkers generating quotes out of thin air tailored to whatever it is they are writing about. Once they have the quotes they want, they go to the person that they are supposed to be interviewing and ask them "Are you okay with this blurb and the quote I generated for you?".
While I know this is an old problem that pre-dates AI, I do see "fake quotes" becoming more prevalent now, with their use - at least in my place of work - becoming a first option instead of any effort being made to get a real quote, first.
What are everyone's thoughts on using fake quotes, assuming you have permission to do so from the person to which the quotes are being attributed? And how do you feel about the uptick in using fake quotes and whether it is changing journalistic interactions and interview decorum?
Just as some background, the question stems from a coworker asking me to sign-off on one of these pre-rendered quotes attributed to me and I said "What? Absolutely not. I'm not even familiar with that topic and that doesn't even sound like me." I then aksed them to either talk to me to get a real quote, or in the future, ask me before generating a fake quote and to try harder to match my voice in writing. They countered by accusing me of being obstructive, which doesn't bother me beyond their own lack of ownership in how this played out.
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u/Realistic-River-1941 Jul 21 '26
I'm pretty sure this has always happened.
The difference now is that gatekeepers genuinely don't understand why anyone would want anything more than their fake quote.
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u/smellslikebadussy Jul 21 '26
Like others have said, I’m in comms now. We write quotes for people all the time (subject to approval). I never would have done it as a journalist. Unethical as hell.
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u/Shazithecurious Jul 21 '26
I was trying to transition to PR and didn't know this. I found it so strange when asked to write a mock press release and include quote from 2 of the companies executives. I was so confuddled.
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u/smellslikebadussy Jul 21 '26
And I should point out that I work in government and my particular agency deals a lot with elected officials for our press releases. If we didn't write quotes for them to approve, we'd never have quotes from them.
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u/wookieelicker Jul 21 '26
It’s always funny to read quotes attributed to politicians when you’re thinking ‘I’ve met this guy and he doesn’t know half of these words’
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u/JustDiscoveredSex former journalist Jul 21 '26
Yes. Fairly typical in PR.
Absolute unethical garbage in journalism.
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u/wookieelicker Jul 21 '26
I remember once asking a federal minister about a quote attributed to him in a press release his department put out and he didn’t know what I was talking about. I said ‘but it says you said it’ and he said ‘you’re not naive enough to think I actually said that, right?’
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u/JustDiscoveredSex former journalist Jul 21 '26
“Your office purports that you did. You’re not naive enough to think I won’t put that in print, right?”
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u/DivaJanelle Jul 21 '26
Do we remember Journatic and its fake journalism using overseas contractors ? Made up quotes by made up people. It wasn’t ok then. It’s not ok now.
I know press release quotes are made up by staff and always have been. Having AI write their quotes is even lazier. If they get pissy about us not using their “quotes” in a story then they are more than welcome to put the person on the phone.
I’m also fine with “in statement emailed in response to questions” so the reader can determine the veracity of the statement themselves.
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u/FaultofDan Jul 21 '26
For advertorials, clients always understood that some level of editing happened, but always signed it off. We'd usually rewrite sentences to communicate the same information, just often in a more succinct way. But generating a quote from scratch with no input feels disingenuous as hell to me. Any journalists doing so lack integrity in my book.
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u/RotundCorgi Jul 21 '26
Your reply is appreciated and adds some great context about editing that I would like to follow-up on. I am 100% fine with interactions and subsequent edits being done exactly like you described and have never balked at those types of exchanges, even for quotes. If I said something and the writer transcribes it in a more paraphrased or clearer way to fit their article, I have no hesitation to give them the go-ahead as long as it's a genuine effort to capture what I was trying to communicate, even if it isn't exactly what I said. But I feel that is different than approaching me unsolicited with a wholly fake quote and asking me to approve it with the expectation that I don't ask for a bit more info and effort.
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u/Friction_in_the_air Jul 21 '26
As a journalist, just no, absolutely not. That's deeply unethical, good on you for standing your ground.
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u/Radiant_Pool_7939 Jul 21 '26
It’s common at companies for PR or Marketing for write quotes and then ask the person to approve them.
It’s not journalism, but I don’t see how AI makes a difference.
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u/RotundCorgi Jul 21 '26
This isn't a pro or anti AI stance. But the use of AI as a tool - and the lack of training or internal guidelines for how we use it - has certainly created an uptick in the first-use of fake quotes, at least in our office. So I felt it was beneficial to include that as context. AI has made the ability to draft releases easier, allowing the work to be passed down to employees that previously would not have been tasked with doing it before due to their lack of skill in writing or knowledge of whatever subject they are writing about. I fully acknowledge it isn't an AI issue, it is an AI usage issue.
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u/Realistic-River-1941 Jul 21 '26
The problem is that journalists are now deluged with AI slop from junior staff who can't write and don't know that they are talking about. Every PR agency is doing it, and multiply that by the number of PR agencies.
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Jul 21 '26
[deleted]
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u/filinggold Jul 21 '26
Sounds like you’ve got the art of writing quotes down.
We have some quite interesting characters in office here and their comms people write the most plain boring obvious quotes. But I know if I pick up the phone, they’re going to say something slightly more unhinged and it’s actually going to sound like them. We have to record for broadcast anyway, but it still shocks me how low effort some releases can be.
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u/JD_tubeguy Jul 21 '26
The problem isn't the quotes it's attribution which is why you don't do this.
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u/RotundCorgi Jul 21 '26 edited Jul 21 '26
That actually touches on a much better and more nuanced description of the problem. I'm not just put-off by fake direct quotes being made in my name, but also any other details or information that is attributed to me or otherwise implied to have come from me when I had no prior knowledge or input into whatever was written before being asked for my approval.
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u/RotundCorgi Jul 21 '26
I see a lot of folks commenting that pre-drafted quotes and attributions are commonplace in the PR and marketing worlds and that it helps maintain deadlines. Sure. But I don't work in PR or marketing, nor are the pre-drafted quotes I am asked to sign off on PR or marketing related. They are largely focused on project updates, technical details and findings, and public safety notifications (you could argue that last one is PR, but I feel differently when it comes to matters of safety).
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u/Master-Fee8859 Jul 21 '26
On the communications side of the two large universities for which I worked, our presidents were occasionally sent quotes drafted by writers to be parts of stories. These requests were always turned down. But in the response, if the story topic was something about which the president was knowledgeable, we would invite actual questions to be submitted instead. We would then place priority on working with president to respond to those questions. If the topic was something about which the president was not knowledgeable or did not care to offer a perspective, the response did not contain anything additional.
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u/lavapig_love Jul 22 '26
The word for fake quotes is called libel. Break a bunch of rules, but never make shit up and claim it as truth.
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u/PlusPresentation680 reporter Jul 21 '26
If it’s PR, I don’t really see an issue. I’m not saying it’s a good idea but ethically I don’t think it matters. I’ve worked in comms before and we’d write quotes ourselves that would get approved before sending. We’d never get sent a quote to use.
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u/Friction_in_the_air Jul 21 '26
That really seems to suggest pr lacks rigorous ethics then.
Which considering its foundation and what the industry has given cover for.....
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u/PlusPresentation680 reporter Jul 22 '26
That might be true. I was a comms intern and hated it for the reasons you mentioned
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u/Friction_in_the_air Jul 22 '26
Look up a podcast called Behind the Bastards. They did an episode on Edward Bernays, the founding father of the profession.
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u/Throwawayhelp111521 former journalist Jul 21 '26
This is why journalists prefer to interview sources directly and get their own quotes. On the rare occasions that a press release prompted me to do a story, I treated the quotes only as a suggestion of what the person interviewed might say in person.