Green Ink points out that a piece I wrote in the Tribune on Eamon Ryan being zexy is in the Irish Daily Mirror today. Green Ink calls in plagiarism. When you work in a Sunday newspaper, you become very used to seeing your stories lifted and whacked in the pages of the tabloids the next day.
If it's a big story, others will 'follow up' and report on it as their own, or with a new angle, but the tabloids just lift it wholesale, including quotes from any interviews you conducted for the story (the Mirror just reprinted the interview I did with Lili Forberg as their own). Occasionally, when a story is being followed up, somewhere in the copy will be the lines, "in a report in The Sunday Tribune" or whatever newspaper, but generally, it is just reprinted as the newspaper's own story. This practice is not limited to tabloids or newspapers either (like when RTE lifted by 'Glen might lose his Oscar' story), and one becomes accustomed to relinquishing ownership of a story as soon as it is printed or broadcast.
This kind of thing doesn't really piss me off, although it probably should. It's just part of the Irish newspaper Sunday-Monday cycle. Sunday newspaper reporters are well used to seeing their stories reappear uncredited in Monday's tabloids. The only thing new here, is that someone else (Green Ink) has noticed the trend.
In conclusion, writing about Eamon Ryan being a roide is not going to get me a Pulitzer, but if it did, can I get two for the reprint?
Monday, May 12, 2008
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26 comments:
To play Devil's Avocado, haven't you just plagiarised a story from a blog and slapped in a few quotes from your mate to pad it out?
:)
Alright, maybe plagiarism is a bit strong.
I didn't plagiarsise nuffink mate!
Lili is THE fashion photographer to go to for things like this. I'm just lucky to have her on speed dial.
The fact is, it's an extremely light story of little importance, and it's always these ones that turn up in the tabs the next day.
There is a kind of 'shareware' attitude in Irish news. It doesn't bother me that much, but I found it interesting that something I saw as just a thing that happens every week was viewed by someone else as blatant plagiarism.
Hey Una,did you see what nailrz wrote about u and the tribune on his blog?
no...
not sure I'm interested unless it's in song form. If possible, a note by note remake of MC Solaar's 'Qui Seme le Vent Recolte la Tempo', but with added hateration.
who's nailrz ??
That's unreal Una. You're basically doing their job for them, lazy bastards.
The tabs are not the only ones at it, una. I've lost count of the number of stories which Hot Press AKA Hot Plagiarism has lifted from my blog. I've no problems with anyone using or refering to a piece, as long as it is credited. I can only imagine the outcry from them if I was the one doing the thieving - then again, they usually have nothing worth lifting ;-)
"...who's nailrz??"
hahaa
where to start... where to start?
:)
Um, are you saying you never randomly used stories previously reported on INM's provincial newspaper website (Unison.ie or now independent.ie) and just did a piddling rewrite, more or less, essentially claiming the story was yours?
I only ask as I heard from a friend in the provincial press that this is what most of the young cub reporters in the Tribune do all the time!
Una wrote: "There is a kind of 'shareware' attitude in Irish news."
...... is writing about Eamon Ryan being a ride 'news journalism'???
Seems like something one would hardly find in the NY Times, eh? Surely if that's the sort of silly crap you write who cares if it's copied/plagiarised?
Jim - I hear ya!
Looney - I think I pointed out that this happens to be a light piece. I'm just using it as an example.
Francesco - loads of stuff in provincial papers gets followed up in the national press, but generally if you spotted a story in a local paper that might be suited to a national, you would follow it up yourself, get new interviews, talk to people yourself, try to get a new angle etc, not just lift quotes and research. It's a completely different thing.
I hear ye. It's happened to me a couple of times too, and it's certainly not just tabloids. I've written stuff on the blog that has popped up as opinion pieces, and even interviews in some of the bigger Sunday papers.
It happens. It's lazy. And it's very hard to do anything about sadly.
@Sinead: care to name and shame with a few examples? I think I'm going to start a list and get everyone to link to it. The only reason I even twigged it is because I heard my work described on Newstalk and bought the Mirror and had read Una's article.
Don't get me started... Once or twice we've given a story to a tabloid based on something that happened on the show during an interview or whatnot and have we been credited.....?
That's one thing about blogs -- at least they are meticulous about providing credit where it's due.
Im going to buy all the Sunday papers and rob everyones stories, not give anyone any credit and put them into my own Newspaper that will be full of ads for sexlines and viagra. Its going to be called 'Yesterdays Ink'. Did anyone see the latest HotPress? The editor is going on about zips for about 9 paragraphs.
Your horse appears to be a tad high. Surely the Tribune hasn't forgotten Liam Lawlor or the New Yorker and let's not get started on the brand new EU directive that has existed since 1988.
I could go on but that would seem unusually cruel, and I'm a nice person.
Gosh, this has generated a lot of angry comments, and it is a fascinating subject...
I'm really with Eoin and the others on this one.
All of the Sunday newspapers (including the Tribune) have a 'late' edition so they can basically see what is on the front page of their rivals and 'lift' it if it is a good enough story.
Isn't that how the Sunday Tribune had all the same RedC polls as the Sunday Business Post during the pre-general election period, yet the Tribune didn't credit the Business Post!?
And wasn't it on the 'late' edition that the Tribune got it so horribly wrong about Liam Lawlor's death and wrote a terrible untruth about his legal secretary? Is it a coincidence that the same wrong story happened to initially appear on the first edition of the Sunday Independent?... surely a case of plagiarism gone horribly wrong, though I doubt Una is likely to campaign too strongly on that specific one!
Una suggested in her reply to one of the earlier posts that it is quite normal and acceptable to source the genesis for news stories from a provincial newspaper and to justify this by conducting new interviews and so forth... but she is being totally evasive and avoiding the well-known fact...
....which is; the Tribune is well-known for 'lifting' provincial newspaper stories (.. which basically involves ringing the people already quoted in the locally published article and then getting your own photos!)..it is lazy, dishonest and scandalous and occurs almost weekly in the Tribune, and there's NEVER, EVER any reference made to the fact that the initial news story was broken in a specific provincial newspaper!
Taking stories off provincial newspaper websites is actually a form of theft as most industrious provincial reporters attempt to sell those stories on to daily newspapers once their local editors are happy that it has gotten a day or two of exclusivity in the local pages.
In fairness to the Star, Daily Mirror and Daily Mail, all three of these will actually ring up a provincial reporter on his mobile and offer him a few quid for the story and will post a cheque at the end of the month.
But the Tribune routinely lift the story and make no reference to the fact that someone else broke the story 100 percent, never pay a penny for it, and even have the cheek to present it as new news, which of course it isn't because the 10,000 people who buy the local paper have all read it before.
This sort of carry-on is far worse than the piddling little issue of a tabloid like the Mirror or Star reusing a silly story about Eamon Ryan in his jocks.
And what about this shining example of journalism standards:
From the Sunday Tribune, dated 4th May 2008: By UNA MULLALLY: "Dip in road deaths puts Ireland in the top 10 for first time."
Hmmm, seems a lot like the basis for an Irish Times story a whole 2 weeks earlier:
From the Irish Times, 18 April 2008by Eoin-Burke Kennedy. "Ireland is now in the top ten of best performing EU states in terms of overall road safety for the first time."
Source: the internet (hey, maybe that's where Una found it too!?)
hahaa
where to start... where to start?
:)
A link to said blog might help. not showing up on google anyway.
@ tally ho - if you actually read the stories and not the headlines (which, as you probably know the authors of stories don't write) you would have realised the two stories are different. One (the Times) assessing fatal RTA figures from the ETSC, the other (the Tribune) a pre-bank holiday weekend story revealing that fatal RTAs were down 40% in the last two months, with comment from the Brian Farrell of the RSA (the Times story has an RSA comment, but it's from Noel Brett) in the context of Ireland's recent improvement in the provisional ETSC figures. It's not unusual for people to report on similar things! There is a difference, however, between reporting on a common theme of falling road deaths and lifting entire copy and quotes, don't you think?
This may have become a little too personal. I commend Una for highlighting the issue and having the guts to put her neck on the line.
Unfortunately this has degenerated to slinging mud at Una, which is unfair.
Hope to see you some night in Toner's.
Slan,
Eoin.
@ tallyho - at this point, you are talking crap, so don't think I'm going to let your subsequent comments through. I have moderated them. I can do that. It's a personal blog.
If you have a real issue with me, why remain anonymous?
See ya!
Tally-ho has won the argument there, Whats the defination of free speech Una? More importantly, why don't you believe in it?
Fair enough, I wasn't trying to get personal Una. Sorry if it seemed I was. I only wrote comments having a go at your work, which is fair criticism --- no more than you do when you criticise bands or whoever.
I just thought your own initial comments, accurate as they are about some tabloids reusing Sunday newspaper stories in Monday editions, deliberately omitted far worse wrongdoing by people at your own paper, something you still have refused to comment on here.
Una, I didn't see you asking any of the others here who are complimentary of your attack on the Daily Mirror and whose identities are anonymous to reveal their names!
As a reporter in a regional paper I can affirm that the Tribune does lift stuff from us! But so do the other broadsheets, regularly. I have lost count of the stories I've broken and sent on looking for a few quid, only to see more or less the same story with maybe one more quote from the same people I interviewed, appear in the papers I've sent them to.
Funnily enough, thumbs up to the tabs on this as they at least pay for what you send. I've been promised joint bylines (but no pay - yes, I'm a sucker) in three national broadsheets for stories I have assisted with and not once have I seen my name on those pieces.
I have spoken to freelancers and national journalists who freely admit "lifting" from a regional paper. Not with guilt - as if it were normal practice.
But then - and journos know this better than anyone - shit happens. And you get over it.
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