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Privacy Notice for Journalists in Meltwater's database

At Meltwater, we know that you care about how your personal data is used and shared, and that is why we are committed to respecting your privacy and to helping you control the personal data we use, disclose and store. This Privacy Notice is applicable for the journalists and content creators (including but not limited to editors, reports, writers, columnists, bloggers, academics, broadcast and podcast hosts) (“Content Creators”) included in Meltwater's Media database ("Notice"). In this Notice you will find information about what personal data we hold about you, how and why we collect it, how we use it, and how we protect it. This Notice also includes information about your rights, how you can exercise them, explains how you can exercise your preferences to manage the personal data we store about you, and, if for any reason you do not want to be in our database, how to have your personal data deleted.

Who this Notice applies to

This Notice applies to Content Creators in our Media Relations database, excluding any German Content Creators added post April 12th 2018.

Why do we collect your personal data and how it is used

Meltwater is a global media intelligence company and one of our products, Media Relations platform, enables our customers ("Customers") to identify and connect with Content Creators, distribute relevant outreach to those Content Creators and measure the impact of their outreach. Customers are interested third parties, i.e. representatives of the PR and / or corporate communications departments of a range of industry verticals who have purchased Meltwater's Media Relations platform. For further information on whom we share your personal data with, please see Section 6 below.
The Media Relations platform is a database consisting of information (and in particular contact details) relating to Content Creators like you. Our intention is to maintain a database of Content Creators who create any forms of content and have the ability to influence the behaviour and opinions of others.
We use your personal data to create a Contact profile for you and include it in the Media Relations platform. Our Customers can access our database via our online platform where they can view your profile, create media lists and send outreach to the Content Creators on those lists. Our Customers can as well monitor your interaction with the communications that they send you (for example, whether you have opened or read an email sent from our platform). This is also beneficial for you as it means you receive targeted news and press releases that may be helpful for you when writing your next story. Our primary goal is to facilitate the efficient communication between our Customer and Content Creators.
We may also use your personal data in connection with the AI features of our service offering, including but not limited to using AI to identify relevant Content Creators for our Customers’ outreach.

What personal data we collect

We limit the information we collect to personal data that enables our Customers to engage with you in a meaningful and targeted way. The personal data includes basic details such as your name and contact details, your job title, public social media profiles, beats you are interested in, and possibly a brief description about your career history.
We only collect personal data that is necessary for the scope of the Media Relations platform. We collect, use, store and transfer different kinds of personal data about you which may include the following:
  • Prefix and name
  • Job title
  • Work address
  • Telephone number
  • Fax number
  • Work email address
  • Personal email address (if provided to us by you)
  • Twitter handle
  • Link to LinkedIn profile
  • Other Social Media handles (Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, Youtube, WeChat, Weibo, Viadeo, Pinterest)
  • Preferred outreach method (email, Twitter)
  • Beats (i.e. subject matters you have written about)
  • Publication
  • Personal website
  • Working language
  • Link to articles published
  • Brief summary of journalism career based on publicly shared information

How we collect your personal data

All personal data we hold about you is obtained from publicly available sources (including public social media profiles and websites and information from articles you may have written), directly from you or from third parties. Your personal data is always gathered by our experienced media research teams and you will receive a notification when your personal data is added to our database. We take reasonable steps to verify that your personal data is correct and up to date.

Legal basis for processing your personal data

We process your personal data in order to provide our services to our Customers. The processing is therefore based on our and our Customers’ legitimate business interests (Art. 6 para. 1 f GDPR). If you want to alter or otherwise control the personal data that is stored in our database, you are free to do so here. Processing your personal data in this way also benefits you as a Content Creator and also our Customers. You will receive focused outreach from our Customers, often ahead of general release, giving you material to write about that is relevant to you and your audience. Our Customers are able to communicate more efficiently to Content Creators who likely want to hear what they have to say. We consider and balance any potential negative impact on you and your rights before we process your personal data for our legitimate interests. We do not use your personal data for activities where we believe that our interests are overridden by any unwarranted adverse impact on you. If at any time you want us to remove you from our database please email us at journalists@meltwater.com and we will process this request promptly.

Tracking

As many of the companies operating in our field we also monitor your engagement with the content that our Customers send to you through our platform. Unless you are based in Germany, we inform our Customers which press releases have been read and opened. This may include placing a cookie on email content that is sent through our platform. We do this to ensure that you only receive press releases that are of relevance to you. If you do not want us to use this cookie, you are free to opt-out at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link at the end of the press release.

How we share your personal data and with whom

We may share your personal data with one or all of the following:
  • Customers: our Customers are typically communications and marketing departments within businesses or other institutions, or PR agencies. Our Customers come from all sectors globally.
  • Internal Third Parties: these include other companies within the Meltwater Group.
  • External Third Parties:
    • Service providers: we may disclose personal data to our service providers, processors and vendors who process personal data on our behalf to enable us to provide our Services as described in this Policy.
    • Business partners: we may also disclose personal data to third parties in relation to business transfers, when implementing mergers, acquisitions, or transfer of assets.
    • Regulatory bodies: we may disclose your personal data to regulators, government entities and/or law enforcements when required by law or legal procedure.

International Transfers

We may share your personal data with entities within the Meltwater Group. This, as well as transfers to some of the third parties to whom we may transfer your personal data in accordance with this Privacy Notice, may involve transferring your personal data to countries outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) or the UK, including the United States of America, that do not provide for a level of data protection equal to that in EEA countries or the UK. Where your personal data is transferred outside of the EEA or the UK, we do on the basis of appropriate data protection safeguards, such as data protection clauses approved by the European Commission and/or UK Government, in order to ensure that there is an adequate level of protection for your personal data. We will make a copy of these safeguards available to you upon request.

How long will we use your personal data?

We will keep your personal data only for as long as is necessary for the purposes set out in this Notice and to fulfill our legal obligations. If you have given your consent through providing us your personal data on our website and accepting the related consent declaration, we process your personal data for as long as stipulated therein or until you withdraw your consent, unless there is another legal ground for the processing.
If you request us to remove your personal data through the unsubscribe and data removal options available in all press releases sent through our platform, your contact profile data, and any associated email tracking data (if any) will be deleted within the legally required period. A request sent via email will be addressed promptly. We will not delete your name, email address or publication details for the purposes of ensuring that you will no longer be contacted by us or our Customers through our platform again and to prevent misattribution.

Your rights

You have certain rights under applicable data protection laws in relation to your personal data. Your rights may depend on where you reside and the rights granted to data subjects in the local legislation. If you wish to exercise your rights please contact journalists@meltwater.com.
Depending on where you reside your rights include the right to:
  • Access your personal data.
  • Require us to correct any mistakes in your personal data which we hold.
  • Require the erasure of personal data concerning you in certain situations.
  • Receive the personal data concerning you which you have provided to us, in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format and have the right to transmit the personal data to a third party in certain situations.
  • Object to decisions being taken by automated means (including profiling) which produce legal effects concerning you or similarly significantly affect you.
  • Object in certain other situations to our continued processing of your personal data, where the processing is based on our legitimate interests.
  • Otherwise restrict our processing of your personal data in certain circumstances.
You also have the right to make a complaint at any time to your local supervisory authority or the Dutch Data Protection Authority, where Meltwater's main establishment in Europe is located, for data protection issues.

Who is the Data Controller?

Meltwater is the data controller and is responsible for your personal data. Our full contact details for each area are as follows:

EMEA
Meltwater Deutschland GmbH
Rotherstrasse 22
10245 Berlin,
Germany

Americas
Meltwater News US Inc.
275 Shoreline Drive, Suite 150
Redwood City 94065, California,
United States

APAC
MNews Malaysia Sdn. Bhd.
Menara UOA Bangsar, Unit A-31-2
No.5 Jalan Bangsar Utama
59000 Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia

Note that our Customers will also be controllers of your personal data to the extent they process such personal data for their own purposes.

In addition to this Notice, we encourage our Customers to provide you with their privacy notices when they reach out to you. Please read this Notice and those of our Customers’ to understand how your personal data is processed and how you can exercise your privacy rights.

Support

If at any time you have any questions about this Notice or the way we use your personal data please contact our Support team at journalists@meltwater.com