HARO Newswire Distribution Terms and Conditions

These terms form a contract between Terkel, Inc., the company that operates Featured and HARO (“Featured”, “HARO”, “we”, “us”), and the person or organisation submitting a press release for distribution (“you”, “the issuer”). HARO Newswire is a service operated by Featured on helpareporter.com. Submitting a release for review means you have read these terms and agree to them.

You must be at least 18 years old and legally able to enter into a contract. If you submit on behalf of an organisation, you confirm you are authorised to bind that organisation to these terms.

Verified issuer requirement. Before your first release is distributed we verify three things:

1. a working email address on the organisation’s own domain, or documentation showing your authority to act for it;
2. the organisation’s legal name and principal place of business; and
3. a named media contact who is a real, reachable person.

Verification normally completes within one business day. Until it does, you can draft and submit but nothing will be distributed. We may re-verify at any time, and may pause distribution while we do.

Agencies and representatives. If you submit on behalf of a client, you confirm that you have the client’s written authorisation to publish the release, to name the client as issuer, and to grant the licence in section 8. The client is bound by these terms as issuer. You and the client are jointly and severally responsible for the release and for the fees. We may ask you to produce the authorisation, and may decline to distribute until you do.

One issuer per release. A release is published in the name of an organisation, not an individual. An individual may be named in a headline only with an accompanying role and organisation. See the Editorial Guidelines.

Accounts belong to the organisation, not to the individual who opened them. Keep your credentials private. You are responsible for everything submitted from your account, including by colleagues and contractors.

HARO Newswire is a paid press release distribution service. When we accept a release we:

1. publish it at helpareporter.com/news-releases/{slug} and on your company newsroom page at helpareporter.com/news-releases/{company};
2. feature it on HARO Newswire at helpareporter.com/news-releases, on its topic listing at helpareporter.com/news-releases?topic={category}, in our feeds and in on-site search; and
3. transmit it for syndication to our national distribution partners, including the Notified and GlobeNewswire network.

HARO Newswire publishes and syndicates releases. It does not email releases to journalists or include them in any HARO newsletter.

Publication is not editorial endorsement. A release published through HARO Newswire is a paid placement submitted by its issuer. It is not a news story, not reporting, and not an endorsement, verification, fact-check or recommendation by HARO, Featured, our editors, our partners or any journalist who reads it. Every release carries a label saying so, and our editors do not sign, byline or vouch for your content.

Editorial review is not fact-checking. Our review confirms that a release meets the Editorial Guidelines: that it is structured as news, that claims are attributed, that it is not an advertisement, that named third parties appear to be cleared. It does not confirm that what you have written is true. We may ask you to substantiate a claim; asking is not verifying, and not asking is not approval of the claim.

No guarantee of pickup or placement. We do not promise, and you should not assume, that a release will produce media coverage, a story, a journalist reply, a link, a placement in any named outlet, a minimum number of views, a search ranking, a citation in an AI answer, or traffic. What we commit to is delivery: publication on HARO Newswire and transmission to our syndication partners, at the wire time you select, and placement reports 24 hours and 7 days after publication. Any distributor who guarantees you a placement is either mistaken or lying.

Networks change. Outlet names and counts in our marketing are illustrative of where releases have historically appeared. Partner networks, outlet lists and syndication rules change without notice, and each partner decides for itself what it will carry. We are not responsible for a partner’s decision or for an outlet that drops a feed.

Crossing the wire. When you schedule a release you choose one moment — a date and a time, to the quarter hour, in a time zone you select. That moment is when the release crosses the wire, and it is the only timing decision you make. At that moment, and not before, we:

1. publish the release page at helpareporter.com/news-releases/{slug}, feature it on HARO Newswire and add it to your newsroom at helpareporter.com/news-releases/{company}; and
2. begin transmission to our syndication partners.

The moment you cross the wire is the release’s publication time: it is the timestamp shown on the release page, the datePublished value in its structured data, and the point from which the deadlines in these terms run.

No capacity limits. There is no cap on the number of releases that can cross the wire on any date or at any time, nothing to reserve, and no circumstance in which an approved release is pushed to a later date because a date is full. Every release that clears editorial review crosses the wire on the date and at the time you chose.

If we publish late. If a release you have been told is scheduled does not cross the wire at its wire time, and the cause is on our side, then:

1. we publish it and start syndication as soon as the problem is fixed, at no charge, and email you to say so; and
2. if the delay runs past one business day, or has made the announcement stale — a dated event has passed, a quarter has closed — you may instead ask us, within five business days, to refund the fee for that release in full. We will do so without argument, and the release stays published.

This clause is the whole of what we owe you for a late publication. Once transmission to a syndication partner has started, when that partner publishes is up to the partner (clause 2.5). Section 11 applies to everything else.

We aim to keep the service continuously available, but we do not guarantee uninterrupted or error-free operation. Planned maintenance is announced in advance where practical.

One release, one price. A release costs $250. That price includes:

1. your release featured on HARO Newswire at helpareporter.com/news-releases and on its topic listing;
2. a permanent release page at helpareporter.com/news-releases/{slug} and your company newsroom page at helpareporter.com/news-releases/{company};
3. national syndication to outlets including AP News and the USA Today Network; and
4. AI-search structuring for citation by AI answer engines such as ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini; and
5. placement reports 24 hours and 7 days after publication, listing where the release ran.

Prices are in US dollars and exclude any applicable tax. The price that applies is the price shown at the moment you submit.

The price is the whole price. There are no add-ons, upgrades, expedite fees, priority fees, per-category fees or per-asset fees, and there is nothing to buy at checkout beyond the release itself. The figure in clause 3.1 is the total we will charge for a release, before tax. Everything listed in clause 3.1 is included in it, and nothing that is not listed there is available for money.

The charge is gated on approval. When you submit a release we place an authorisation on your card for the full amount. We capture the charge only when an editor approves the release for distribution. If we decline to publish, we release the authorisation, and any amount already captured is refunded in full. Refunds are issued to the original payment method; your bank normally posts them within five to ten business days.

After distribution, fees are non-refundable. Because distribution cannot be reversed (section 7), we do not refund a release that has been sent. That includes cases where you later find an error in your own copy, where the release does not produce the coverage you hoped for, where a syndication partner declines the release after we transmitted it, or where you simply change your mind.

Distribution credits. Where we owe you value but cannot sensibly refund it — for example where an element listed in clause 3.1 could not be delivered after approval — we issue a distribution credit. A distribution credit is denominated in dollars, is valid for twelve months from issue, may be applied against any release, is transferable within your organisation, and is not redeemable for cash. Where a credit exceeds the price of the release you apply it to, the balance stays on the account until it expires.

Prepaid release credits are a different thing. A release credit bought in advance entitles you to one release, is spent only when an editor approves a release, expires twelve months after purchase, and is refunded to the account as a credit — not as cash — if the release is later withdrawn or declined. Prepaid credits are not add-ons; they are the same release, paid for earlier.

Disputes about a charge. Email newswire@helpareporter.com before you file a chargeback; most billing questions are resolved the same day. A chargeback filed against a release that has already been distributed may result in suspension of the account and removal of the release page we host.

You are responsible for any sales tax, VAT, GST or withholding that applies to your purchase, other than taxes on our income.

Every release must meet the HARO Newswire Editorial Guidelines, which are part of these terms by reference. The Guidelines carry the detail and the worked examples; this section restates the prohibitions that we will not waive. The version of the Guidelines in force is the version published when you submit.

Hard prohibitions. A release must not:

1. contain pornographic or sexually explicit content;
2. promote illegal drugs or drug paraphernalia. Medical cannabis and therapeutic psilocybin are permitted where they are lawful in the issuer’s jurisdiction and the release is marketed within that law;
3. contain investment advice, including buy, sell or hold recommendations, price targets, projected returns, or characterisations of a security as undervalued or a good entry point;
4. promote cryptocurrency mining, hosted mining, hash-rate leasing or yield products. Other cryptocurrency and digital-asset topics are permitted;
5. be, or contain, a product review, a comparative ranking of other companies’ products, or a “best of” or “top ten” list;
6. claim a partnership, customer relationship, endorsement, award or certification that does not exist or that the other party has not approved;
7. state a statistic, study result or research finding without naming a verifiable source;
8. be defamatory, libellous, harassing, or gratuitously inflammatory about an identifiable person or company;
9. infringe anyone’s copyright, trademark, publicity or privacy rights;
10. be an advertisement dressed as news: coupon codes, calls to action, pricing tables, or copy with no news event in it;
11. discuss press release distribution itself, including claims of guaranteed placement on any outlet;
12. contain malware, tracking pixels, cloaked or redirecting links, link schemes, or links whose destination differs from the anchor text; or
13. violate applicable law, including securities, advertising, consumer protection, sanctions and export law.

Regulated categories. Releases about health and medical products, financial services, securities, legal services, cannabis, gambling, dietary supplements, firearms and products for children must comply with the rules that govern them, including the rules of the FDA, FTC, SEC, FINRA and any applicable state regulator. We may require substantiation before approving, and we may decline a release in a regulated category without giving a detailed reason. Required disclosures, including FTC endorsement and testimonial disclosures, are your responsibility and must appear in the release itself.

Named third parties. Anyone quoted must have approved their quote in writing. Any company named as a partner, customer, investor or supplier must have approved the mention. Any trademark or logo you use that is not yours must be used with permission. We may ask to see that permission before we approve, and we will decline the release if you cannot produce it.

Media assets. Images, video and audio you upload must be licensed for editorial and commercial redistribution, with no expiry, no geographic limit and no attribution requirement we cannot meet in a caption. Do not submit stock photography staged to look like a real event. Every asset needs a caption and alternative text; we will not publish an image without alt text.

Each time you submit a release, you represent and warrant that:

1. every statement of fact in it is accurate and not misleading, including by omission, as at the moment of submission;
2. you own, or hold a licence sufficient to grant the rights in section 8 for, all text, quotes, images, video, audio, logos and data in the release;
3. you hold written permission from every person quoted and every organisation named as a partner, customer, investor or endorser;
4. nothing in the release is defamatory or violates any person’s rights of privacy or publicity;
5. the release complies with all laws that apply to you and to the audience it reaches;
6. where the release concerns publicly traded securities, you are solely responsible for compliance with securities law, including Regulation FD, the timing and content of disclosure, and any filing or furnishing obligation. HARO Newswire is a distribution service, not a regulatory filing agent: we do not file with the SEC, EDGAR, any exchange or any regulator on your behalf, and our publication timestamp is not a substitute for a filing;
7. you are not, and are not acting on behalf of anyone, subject to sanctions or on a restricted-party list;
8. the media contact details are real, current and monitored by a person who can respond to press enquiries;
9. every statistic, survey result or research finding has a named source that a journalist can check, with a date, a sample size where relevant and a link where one exists; and
10. if you are an agency or representative, you hold your client’s written authorisation as described in clause 1.4.

These representations are given at submission and repeated at approval. If any of them stops being true before distribution, you must tell us immediately at newswire@helpareporter.com and we will hold the release. After distribution, see section 7.

Every release is reviewed before it is distributed. Review has two stages: an automated pre-check that runs at submission, and a human editor who reads the release. We target a decision within one business day of submission. Business days are Monday to Friday, excluding US federal holidays. Submit far enough ahead of the wire time you have chosen that a round of changes still leaves room: a release that is still in review when its wire time arrives does not go out, and clause 6.4 says what happens then.

Review produces one of three outcomes:

1. Approved. We capture the charge and schedule the release to cross the wire at the date and time you chose.
2. Changes requested. The release returns to you with the editor’s notes. Nothing is charged. You may revise and resubmit as many times as you like at no extra cost.
3. Rejected. We will not distribute the release. Nothing is charged, and any authorisation is released.

Our discretion is broad. We may decline any release, for any reason, including reasons not listed in these terms or the Editorial Guidelines. HARO Newswire is a private publisher and is not obliged to distribute anything. We normally explain a rejection, and there is an appeal route in the Editorial Guidelines, but we are not required to justify a decision or to reach the same decision twice on similar material.

Between approval and crossing the wire. Approval schedules a release; it does not guarantee that it will go out. If we learn of a problem after approving and before the release crosses the wire — a legal complaint, a factual challenge, a partner objection — we may pull it from the schedule and refund the fee in full. You may also do either of these things yourself, at no charge, up to sixty minutes before your wire time:

1. reschedule. Move the release to any other wire date and time. Because there are no capacity limits, any date is open. Rescheduling does not send the release back to review, does not change its URL and does not charge you again; and
2. withdraw. Take the release off the schedule for a full refund. It returns to draft, and resubmitting it is a new submission that goes through review again.

Inside the last sixty minutes the release is committed to the publication and transmission queues and neither is available. If review is still open when your wire time arrives, the release simply does not go out and nothing is charged; we tell you, and you pick a new wire time at no cost once it is approved.

Removal from pages we host. We may unpublish a release from helpareporter.com at any time if we conclude it breaches these terms, if we receive a credible legal complaint, or if we are required to. Clause 7.3 describes what unpublishing does and does not achieve.

Repeatedly resubmitting material we have already rejected, or making cosmetic edits to get prohibited content through review, is a breach of these terms and may result in suspension under section 10.

A release is distributed the moment it crosses the wire, as clause 2.6 defines that: the release page is public and the transmission to syndication partners has started. That is the point of no return, and it is the wire time you chose.

Once a release has been distributed, we do not issue retractions, corrections, amendments or removals, for any reason. That applies to typographical errors, wrong figures, the wrong executive title, a quote the speaker regrets, an embargo broken by the issuer, a deal that later collapses, and a release you scheduled to cross the wire at the wrong time by mistake on your side.

Why the rule is absolute. The moment you cross the wire, two things start and neither of them can be reversed:

1. the release is transmitted to syndication partners, who publish it on their own systems, under their own terms, to their own downstream feeds. We have no technical ability to delete a copy from a partner’s servers or from the hundreds of sites that ingest their feeds; and
2. aggregators, search engine crawlers and AI indexing systems fetch the page, usually within minutes. Once content is in a cache, an archive or a training or retrieval corpus, it is outside anyone’s control, including ours.

A distribution service that promised retractions would be promising something it cannot deliver.

The one thing we can do. On written request from the verified media contact, we will unpublish the release page we host on helpareporter.com and remove it from your newsroom, from our browse pages, from our feeds and from our on-site search. We normally do this within one business day and we do not charge for it. Email newswire@helpareporter.com from the media contact address.

Be clear about what that does not do. Unpublishing our page does not remove copies published by syndication partners or the outlets downstream of them, does not remove the release from third-party caches, archives, aggregators or AI systems that have already ingested it, and does not prevent anyone from quoting or republishing what they received.

The normal remedy is a new release. Wire services correct the record by publishing a correction, not by deleting history. If you need to correct a material factual error in a release distributed in the last fourteen days, we will distribute a correction release at no charge, subject to the usual editorial review. Contact us within fourteen days of the original distribution. A correction release is headed as a correction, names the original release and the date it crossed the wire, and states only the corrected facts. This is a goodwill policy, not a right.

What counts as a material factual error. A material factual error is a statement of fact in the release that was already wrong when the release crossed the wire and that would mislead a reader about who, what, when, where or how much. Wrong facts of these kinds qualify:

1. a number, such as a price, an amount raised, revenue, a percentage, a headcount or a statistic;
2. a date, time or location, such as the date of an event, a launch, a deadline or an effective date;
3. the name, the spelling of a name, the title or the affiliation of a person or organisation;
4. the relationship between organisations, such as partner, customer, investor, supplier or acquirer;
5. who said a quote, or who produced a statistic or study; and
6. a link, ticker symbol or contact detail that sends readers to the wrong place.

These do not qualify: changes of style, tone, emphasis or wording; information you left out; a quote the speaker would now put differently; facts that changed after the release crossed the wire, such as a delayed launch or a deal that fell through, which belong in a new release; and an error an editor asked you to fix during review. A typographical error counts only when it changes a fact, so a wrong digit in a price qualifies and a misspelled common word does not. Our editors decide whether an error is material, and their decision is final.

Legal demands. If we receive a court order, a valid takedown notice, or a complaint we consider credible, we may unpublish our copy without waiting for your agreement, and we will tell you that we have. Unpublishing in those circumstances is not an admission by us or by you.

Unpublishing a release under this section does not entitle you to a refund, whoever asked for it. Distribution is the service, and it was delivered.

You keep ownership of everything you submit. This section is a licence, not a transfer.

You grant Featured, and the distribution partners and downstream publishers through which we distribute, a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, fully paid, sublicensable and transferable licence to host, reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, syndicate, translate, excerpt, reformat, index, summarise, create machine-readable representations of, publicly display and permanently archive the release — including its headline, summary, body, quotes, key facts, media assets, and your name, logo and trademarks as they appear in it — for the purposes of distributing and archiving the release and of describing and promoting HARO Newswire.

Search engines and AI systems. We will say this plainly because members ask. Releases published through HARO Newswire are public web pages, and we deliberately make them easy for machines to read: schema.org NewsArticle structured data, clean semantic HTML, a stable permanent URL, a public feed and a machine-readable key-facts block.

We permit search engines, news aggregators, research crawlers and AI systems — including large language model training pipelines, retrieval systems and AI answer engines — to crawl, index, store, quote, summarise and cite your release. We do not block them in robots.txt, we do not apply noai, noindex or similar directives to release pages, and we do not filter them from our feeds.

This is a feature, not an oversight: being findable and citable by AI answer engines is one of the reasons people buy this product, and it is what the AI-search structuring included with every release is for. It also means you cannot later require us to withdraw your release from those systems, because we have no mechanism to do so. If you do not want your announcement read, stored and quoted by machines, do not distribute it.

We do not sell release content to third parties as a licensed training dataset, and we do not grant exclusive rights in your content to anyone. The licence in 8.2 exists so we can distribute, syndicate and archive; it is not a licence for us to resell your content as a product.

The archive is permanent. Release pages are intended to stay at the same URL indefinitely, because journalists cite them and because a dead link in an old story is worse than no link. Even where we unpublish a page under clause 7.3, we retain an internal copy for legal, audit and dispute purposes.

You permit us to display your organisation’s name and logo as an issuer on HARO Newswire and in customer lists and case studies. Tell us at newswire@helpareporter.com if you would rather we did not, and we will stop.

If you send us feedback or suggestions about the service, we may use them without obligation to you.

The media contact must be real and monitored. Every release names a media contact: a named person and a working email address, plus a phone number if you choose. That inbox must be monitored, and someone must be able to answer a journalist’s question within one business day for at least thirty days after distribution. An unmonitored press contact is the fastest way to lose a story you have already paid to place.

You never receive the journalist list. The HARO network is not for sale, rent, export or download, in whole or in part. You may not harvest, scrape, copy, reconstruct, infer or purchase journalist contact details from anything you receive through HARO Newswire.

No adding journalists to lists. A journalist who contacts you about a release has not opted in to anything. You may not add them to a marketing list, a newsletter, a CRM sequence or a future distribution list without their express consent, and you may use their details only to respond to their enquiry about that release. You are responsible for compliance with CAN-SPAM, CASL, the UK and EU GDPR and any other law that applies to you.

Automated or bulk outreach to journalists built from a release or the journalists who contacted you about it — sequenced “just checking in” emails, auto-diallers, mass LinkedIn requests — is prohibited, whether you do it or a tool does it for you.

Consequences. If you abuse the journalist network we may suspend or terminate your account, unpublish your releases, refuse future submissions from you or your organisation, and where journalists were directly affected, tell them what happened. No refund is due on termination for abuse. We will say why this is strict: journalists trust the HARO name because the signal-to-noise ratio has been protected for eighteen years. That trust is part of what you are buying, and we will protect it ahead of any individual customer relationship.

You must not use HARO Newswire to:

1. impersonate another organisation or person, or issue a release in a name you are not authorised to use;
2. manipulate a securities market, including promotional releases timed to support a coordinated trading scheme;
3. harass, threaten, dox or retaliate against an identifiable person or company;
4. evade editorial review, including by submitting a materially different version to a partner than the version we approved;
5. scrape, crawl at scale, or systematically copy helpareporter.com, our release archive or our feeds beyond ordinary use;
6. resell or rebrand HARO Newswire distribution as your own wire service without a written reseller agreement; or
7. interfere with the service, our infrastructure or other members’ use of it.

We may suspend or terminate an account immediately for a material breach of these terms, for fraud or payment abuse, for illegal use, or for abuse of the journalist network under section 9. Where the breach is capable of being fixed and no harm is ongoing, we will normally give you notice and a chance to fix it first.

You may close your account at any time by writing to us. Closing an account does not refund fees for distribution already delivered and does not unpublish your release pages; ask separately under clause 7.3 if you want a page taken down.

Sections 5, 7, 8, 11 and 12, and any payment obligation already incurred, survive termination or expiry of this agreement.

The service is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis. To the fullest extent permitted by law we disclaim all implied warranties, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement, and we make no warranty about results: coverage, replies, pickup, placement, traffic, search ranking, AI citation or commercial outcome.

We are not liable for the acts or omissions of third parties, including syndication partners, outlets that carry or decline a release, search engines, AI systems, and journalists who use or ignore what you send them.

Cap on liability. Our total liability to you for all claims connected with a release is limited to the fees you paid us for that release. For claims not connected with a specific release, our total liability is limited to the fees you paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose. This cap applies in aggregate, however the claim is framed.

Neither party is liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost revenue, lost business, lost goodwill or reputational harm, even if told such damages were possible. Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including for fraud or for death or personal injury caused by negligence.

Indemnity. You will defend and indemnify Featured, its distribution partners, and their officers, employees and agents against any claim, demand, loss, liability or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising from your release, your breach of these terms, or your violation of law or of a third party’s rights. We will notify you promptly of any such claim, let you control the defence with counsel we reasonably approve, and cooperate at your expense. We may participate with our own counsel at our expense. You may not settle a claim in a way that admits fault on our part, or imposes an obligation on us, without our written consent.

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain exclusions or limitations. Where that is the case, the exclusions and limitations in this section apply to the fullest extent the law allows, and the rest of the section remains in force.

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Arizona, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods does not apply.

Talk to us first. Before either party starts formal proceedings, it will describe the dispute in writing to the other and both will try in good faith to resolve it for thirty days. Send yours to newswire@helpareporter.com with “Dispute” in the subject line. Most disputes about a release are resolved in a phone call.

If that fails, disputes will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Maricopa County, Arizona, and both parties consent to personal jurisdiction there. Either party may seek injunctive relief in any court to protect its intellectual property or confidential information.

A claim arising out of these terms must be brought within one year of the date the claim arose, or it is waived, to the extent the law permits.

Changes to these terms. We may update these terms. For material changes we will email account contacts at least fourteen days before they take effect and update the “last updated” date at the top of this page. The version that governs a release is the version displayed on this page at the moment you submit it, and we keep a copy of that version with your release record. Superseded versions stay available at /newswire/terms/archive. Continuing to submit releases after a change means you accept the updated terms.

General. These terms, together with the Editorial Guidelines and the order details for each release, are the entire agreement between us about HARO Newswire and replace any prior discussion. If a provision is unenforceable, the rest stays in force. A delay in enforcing a right is not a waiver of it. We may assign this agreement to an affiliate or in connection with a merger or sale of the business; you may not assign it without our written consent. There are no third-party beneficiaries, except that our distribution partners may rely on the licence in section 8. Neither party is liable for failure to perform caused by events outside its reasonable control. Notices to you go to your account email; notices to us go to the address below. Headings are for convenience only.

Contact. For anything about these terms, a release, a refund, or a request to unpublish under clause 7.3:

Unpublish requests must come from the verified media contact on the release. Editorial questions about what will pass review are answered faster in the Editorial Guidelines.