Bizarro World : Associated Press Plagiarizing Blogs
Larisa Alexandrovna at The Huffington Post shares an account of her material and ideas being stolen by an Associated Press writer with no credit to the blog what-so-ever. Better yet (better as in it makes the story juicier) an AP Senior Editor told Huffington Post that the Press did not have to credit them because they are a blog.
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.
What we are or are not is frankly irrelevant. What is relevant is that by using a term like blog to somehow excuse plagiarism, the mainstream press continues to lower the bar for acceptable behavior.
Pretty damn lame of an excuse by the AP and goes to show how ‘citizenship media’ is slowly exposing the workings of the traditional press.
Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim pipes up:
The plagiarizing is shameful. But it’s also sad that some traditional media outlets continue to not credit (or link-to) bloggers as the source for a story.
Which mainstream media sources do a good job of crediting bloggers? Any of them good at including hyperlinks?
Andy, along with Danny Sullivan, is quoted quite frequently in the mainstream but I rarely ever see a link back to Fortune Interactive in online versions of news stories. Some reporters get it, some don’t, and some have no control on the spinoff business managing the web version of news publications and which links are included in stories.
But dammit, there is no excuse for not even crediting a source, moreover copying their idea and material. Shame on you.
