AP, ESPN accused of plagiarizing blogs

2006-03-28

By Robert Niles: Two stories this morning about large news organizations plagiarizing independent online media:

The first, related by King Kaufman at Salon regards an ESPN radio host ripping off a comedy bit from a sports blogger in Michigan.

Larisa Alexandrovna of Raw Story reports the second and (literally) more serious example. In Huffington Post, she writes that one of her investigative reports found its way into an Associated Press story, which did not attribute the information to her or to Raw Story. Alexandrovna writes:

"We contacted an AP senior editor and ombudsmen both and both admitted to having had the article passed on to them, and both stated that they viewed us as a blog and because we were a blog, they did not need to credit us."

Janet D. Stemwedel of ScienceBlogs.com summed the issue best:

"It doesn't matter whether the source is a professional journalist for a major media outlet or a small press, a writer for an online publication or a blog, or a student or private citizen. If you use their words or ideas, you must cite the source. Otherwise, you're committing plagiarism."

Update: From AP:

From Linda Wagner, AP's Director of Media Relations and Public Affairs:
The Raw Story assertion that AP plagiarized and then admitted it is absolutely false. The AP story in question, on new U.S. policies that could increase security clearance hurdles for gay employees, came to AP as a tip from an advocacy group. AP then did independent reporting and found the policy document on the National Archives web site, www.archives.gov/isoo/, which was included in the original AP story. We were not aware of the Raw Story work until the following afternoon when someone from Raw Story called. An AP spokesman did tell Raw Story that AP does not credit blogs, but he was mistaken. AP does credit blogs when we are aware that they have broken a story first. The spokesman then called Raw Story back to correct his misstatement. Raw Story seems to have taken that correction as an admission of plagiarism, which it emphatically is not.

Links to this article: Technorati, Yahoo

Comments:

From Bob Stewart on March 29, 2006 at 7:30 AM

Remarkably arrogant on the part of the AP. If they deem that it isn't necessary to credit the source if it happens to be a blog, why are the even paying attention to the blog in the first place?

From Jon Garfunkel on March 29, 2006 at 9:30 PM

Of course, Larisa said Raw Story is not a blog. Editor John Byrne has said so on mnay occasions.

Josh Marshall reports tonight a story his TPM Muckrakers originally reported on has been lifted by the AP.

It's funny. You take an individual blog, add a staff, call one person the "editor" and the others the "reporters" and start adding departments/section, have a rough idea over assignments, do some original reporting... does this start to look like any familiar media creature we know? The only thing left to do is to kill the most-recent-is-top-story rule, and you've got a webzine.

Yes, reporters will be more careful from now on.

Part of are blogs and all structured online media are going to have to do, in order to scale, is to give a clue to their readers as what is originalm and what is derivative, and what is a copy-and-paste job. Yes, what can see whether a link is there, but this needs to be in syndication formats like RSS and NewsML (I can look into the latter).

This article has been archived and is no longer accepting comments.