Murdoch's NY Post Continues To Source Articles From Bloggers With No Credit

from the what's-stealing,-Rupert? dept

Fri, Mar 5th 2010 6:17pm — Mike Masnick

Rupert Murdoch and his minions at News Corp. have been going around banging the drum that Google and others are "stealing" from News Corp. newspapers by linking to their stories and sending them traffic. But at the same time, they seem to have no problem totally taking credit for stories that they source from elsewhere. Late last year, the Times (of London), which is a News Corp. paper was caught publishing someone's blog post without their permission at all. And then there's the News Corp.-owned NY Post, which last year had a reporter admit that it was the paper's "policy" not to credit bloggers as the sources for stories. After that story came out, the NY Post insisted that wasn't true, but it appears the paper has been caught doing it again.

Andrew Fine alerted us to the news that suggests the NY Post used one of his posts as inspiration for a story. Fine had written about the rather disconcerting sign in a Chuck E. Cheese in Harlem. That blog post got some attention on various other blogs... and then just a couple of days later, the NY Post had an article about the very same sign (apparently, it took two reporters to write that article), with nary a mention of Fine's original blog post (or even any of the other blog posts that promoted Fine's original story).

Now, to be clear, while I do think it's good manners to cite where you sourced a story, it's certainly not required (legally or otherwise) by any means. But where it gets hypocritical is for this to come from an organization that claims that other sites merely linking to its articles are somehow "stealing." But when the NY Post comes in and blatantly borrows an idea from someone else, and does so without credit, that's perfectly fine? It seems like Murdoch and News Corp. have quite the double standard going.

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Filed Under: citations, ny post, rupert murdoch, sources, stories
Companies: news corp.

40 Comments

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i ate my wheatus, 5 Mar 2010 @ 6:19pm

start suing him people
he needs a lesson in humility.
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ChurchHatesTucker (profile), 5 Mar 2010 @ 6:41pm

Meh.
Journalists are besmirching the good name of bloggers.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Mar 2010 @ 6:49pm

"After that story came out, the NY Post insisted that wasn't true"

and telling lies is also not right.
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Gary, 5 Mar 2010 @ 7:14pm

Question
I gather the post took the blogger's idea and created their own story. They didn't copy the blogger's story.

Can't they use the "invention is the least of it, execution is what counts" mantra that justifies the same set of actions when we're talking about patents?

The two situations seem very similar.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Mar 2010 @ 7:18pm

Re: Question
No one is saying they did anything wrong by taking the idea from a blogger, just that if a blogger does it they get mad and hence they're hypocrites and that's wrong.
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Anonymous Coward, 5 Mar 2010 @ 7:19pm

Re: Re: Question
(to continue) basically, it's the act of saying that no one else can do it but them that's wrong. Got it. I don't understand why this is so difficult for you to understand.
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Jade, 5 Mar 2010 @ 9:30pm

No credibility
I don't know about in the US, but here in Australia they have no credibiltiy and their papers are regarded as laughing stocks (and they've been caught before completely making stories up with their "sources" being the reporter who wrote the story). Their papers are good for a laugh though.
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Overcast (profile), 5 Mar 2010 @ 10:38pm

Re: Meh.
Journalists are besmirching the good name of bloggers.

Oddly now - I think that's actually more accurate than the reverse.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Mar 2010 @ 1:36am

Re: No credibility
Alternatively, you can burn it in the fireplace and it can generate some heat that will warm you up. There, it has a good purpose. Or you can swat flies with it maybe.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Mar 2010 @ 1:41am

Re: Re: No credibility
errr. well, I confused function with purpose. They have a good function, being that their purpose was to provide news (but they FUNCTION as decent fly swatters or as fire fuel to keep you warm). My mistake.

Anywho, a good, loud, high pitched sound, that's (mostly) too high for someone to hear, will generally clear a room of flies within an hour, two at the most (though often much less).

If you want to generate that sound with your LOUD computer speakers on full blast you can use a program called Audacity, it allows you to generate sound. You can either set the frequency to like one and blast it or set it to the highest that it allows (I forgot) and blast it. The actual sound/frequency as rendered by your speaker though may vary depending on your speaker.

Also, keep away from pets, especially dogs, being it's NOT good for their ears.

The idea of using software to rid a parameter of insects is not patentable or in any way subject to intellectual property.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Mar 2010 @ 1:49am

Re: Re: Re: No credibility
oh, and generally the sine wave at 1 HZ blasted on full blast does wonders to rid a parameter of flies (though I think the actual sound is a very high frequency though 1 HZ is supposed to be low. You will hear some of the sound just barley, but most of it you won't but they hear a much larger proportion of it and, to the extent it doesn't get rid of them, it severely disorients them after a while making them much easier to kill). In this one building I've been to that gets swamped with flies, I turn it on and blast it, within less than an hour they're all gone.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Mar 2010 @ 1:54am

Re: Re: Re: Re: No credibility
again, this idea is NOT patentable or subject to intellectual property.
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Betty Chambers, 6 Mar 2010 @ 4:41am

Not Just NY Post
The Murdoch Media Empire is not alone in doing this. I've seen enough discussions on blogs get misappropriated by reporters who will lift entire quotes, the entire topic, use phrases, and incorrectly attribute opinions that never existed in the discussion.

Jayson Blair (former NY Times writer) was not alone in making stuff up.
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K Jeacoma (profile), 6 Mar 2010 @ 6:14am

NY Post steals content
In the New York Jet Fan Tazed story that ran on Post's fromt page, they used my photo, and linked to my video, without giving me even a mention- check it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsGnH-YhzzI
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NAMELESS.ONE, 6 Mar 2010 @ 6:20am

@14 talk to a lawyer
seriously if he goes on get screen shots how he threatens to sue for the same thing and EAT him for breakfast
judges dont like people like him
they waste time for real cases.
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Hua Fang (profile), 6 Mar 2010 @ 6:36am

let everybody on the same page of originality-credit-checking
We are entering a era of spontaneous reasoning mechanism by internet related technologies. It means that when somebody uses some news sources or original data point (time-tagged) for their-own news, article, paper or any new writings, the link should be automatically 'mapped up" without too much "at-the-moment" writer be aware of. In such way, everybody can have a "fair say" even including the dead.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Mar 2010 @ 7:08am

Steal this idea!
Mike can you please write an article about cablevision, viacom, abc, fox and all the problems TV and cable networks have been having negotiating new contracts and so called TV "taxes"? Please?
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Cartman, 6 Mar 2010 @ 7:08am

Re: Re: Re: No credibility
WTH are you going on about

"(mostly) too high for someone to hear ... generate that sound with your LOUD computer speakers "

- you will need special speakers, because your typical computer or audio type speakers are not designed to produce sound above the range that the humans can hear as it would be silly to waste money doing so.

"rid a parameter of insects "

- what ? Possibly you meant perimeter
- Have you tried producing the brown note ? Do try, and let us know that turned out.
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boomzilla (profile), 6 Mar 2010 @ 8:52am

Murdoch vs. bloggers
Far be it for to defend Rupert Murdoch, but the activity you describe applies to what TV and radio stations have been doing for years and years and years. I was a newspaper editor of one sort or another for nearly 30 years, and it always struck me that the stories I was hearing on the radio or seeing on TV were the same stories we had worked on the night before.

Here's what happens:

Newspaper publishes story.
Clerks from TV and radio stations pick up first editions the night before they land on doorsteps, either at the printing plants or as bundles are dropped at news stands.
TV station (and/or radio) sends reporter with camera person to location story took place.
TV reporter does his or her own report based on newspaper's story or AP rewrite of same story.
Voila! So-called independent story.

It doesn't make Murdoch any less a hypocrite.

But as someone who looks at RSS feeds from between 90 and 135 web sites each day, I can tell you that the majority (2/3? 3/4? who cares?) of stories out there originate at newspapers in one form or another. Broadcasters are generally pathetic. Bloggers ad their own embellishments and interpretation and sometimes genuinely thoughtful perspective. And they do break stories and add immense value and interesting perspectives to content they don't initiate.

But the kernels of most news stories originate with newspapers. You may not like it, but it's a fact. It may be less true than it used to be but it's still true, based on my fairly thorough but unscientific observations.

I no longer work at a newspaper, having lost my job because of the continuing contraction in that business. I don't blame anyone but newspaper management for dragging their feet for years and years and years.

It does not change, however, the fact that what you describe is the way things have always worked.

But whenever I write something based on something someone else had first, I point it out, and prominently. Most respectable journalists would do this.

Whether Murdoch's minions fall into that category, I'll leave for others to decide. I'm biased.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Mar 2010 @ 9:55am

Re: Re: Re: Re: No credibility
I did mean perimeter, my mistake.

"you will need special speakers, because your typical computer or audio type speakers are not designed to produce sound above the range that the humans can hear as it would be silly to waste money doing so."

No, I've done it with regular computer speakers, it works perfectly fine. Yes, typical speakers are generally not designed to produce sounds outside of our ability to hear but that doesn't mean they can't. Also, typical speakers have a smaller speaker, for high frequencies, and a larger speaker, for lower frequencies.

Any time you emit sound, just like with light, you emit a distribution of sounds across many frequencies. For instance, the blackbody spectrum denotes the various frequencies that are being emitted by EMBR (ie: one axis can denote frequency and another axis can denote intensity). You can do the same thing for sound. The peaks occur at a certain frequency but you can hear sound at other frequencies as well. So your computer speakers do indeed emit sounds at frequencies you can't hear and you don't hear all of the sound being emitted. The same is true for sounds/light you receive, certain receptors can receive sound/light optimally at specific frequencies but they receive all frequencies to some degree.

The microphone, in fact, is just a small speaker, you can even use a speaker as a microphone if you wanted to. But the microphone is smaller because its size enables it to more optimally receive the frequencies that we tend to transmit when speaking.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Mar 2010 @ 9:58am

Re: Re: Re: Re: No credibility
"- Have you tried producing the brown note ? Do try, and let us know that turned out."

If you left a smoke detector on and didn't turn it off, it will likely drive you out of your house. THOSE THINGS ARE LOUD AND ANNOYING. Well guess what, not all sound that exists is sound that we can hear. Insects hear sound we can't hear and you can very well use that sound to annoy the heck out of them and make them leave. It works, try it.
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Anonymous Coward, 6 Mar 2010 @ 10:00am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: No credibility
ERR. why did I say EMBR. It's CMBR.

Dang, I must be seriously sleep deprived.
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Steve, 6 Mar 2010 @ 1:05pm

As old as the hills.
As "boomzilla" above points out, one outlet "borrowing" or taking leads from another outlet is as old as the hills.

I used to be in radio and our news guys would scour the local papers and listen to the competition for stories, which they would then go out and report. The other stations and the local paper would do to the same to us.

Sorry, but as much as I dislike Rupe and his execrable media empire, this is a non-story.
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Mike Masnick (profile), 6 Mar 2010 @ 1:38pm

Re: As old as the hills.
As "boomzilla" above points out, one outlet "borrowing" or taking leads from another outlet is as old as the hills.

Indeed. I wasn't saying that it wasn't done. It's always been done.

But it's rather hypocritical of Rupert to call it stealing when done to him, but then have his own papers do it, don't you think.

I thought I made that clear in the post itself. I'm fine with it being done, but I think it's hypocritical to do it yourself if you're going to call other people doing something similar "stealing" and threaten to sue them.

In fact, I'd argue that what the Post did is "worse" than what Google does. In the Post's case they gave no credit to the originator. In the Google case, they link and send traffic.
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Mike Masnick (profile), 6 Mar 2010 @ 1:39pm

Re: Steal this idea!
Mike can you please write an article about cablevision, viacom, abc, fox and all the problems TV and cable networks have been having negotiating new contracts and so called TV "taxes"? Please?

Eh. It's really a non-story. I've written about it every year that it comes up, because it comes up every year when new contracts are due, and it's really kinda pointless, so I'm sitting it out this year.
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Mike Masnick (profile), 6 Mar 2010 @ 1:40pm

Re: Murdoch vs. bloggers
Far be it for to defend Rupert Murdoch, but the activity you describe applies to what TV and radio stations have been doing for years and years and years. I was a newspaper editor of one sort or another for nearly 30 years, and it always struck me that the stories I was hearing on the radio or seeing on TV were the same stories we had worked on the night before.

Oh absolutely. It happens all the time. But that's not the point. As I said in the post, I have no problem with this happening -- but it's rather hypocritical to call it "stealing" when it's done to you, but then do it yourself.
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TW Burger (profile), 6 Mar 2010 @ 3:36pm

Cause and Effect
So, wiping myself after a BM with a News Corp. paper would be essentially redundant?
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enrolled agent exam (profile), 6 Mar 2010 @ 8:55pm

The evolution of media
The shady tactics don't surprise me very much. Integrity would be nice, but this is the mainstream media we are talking about...right?
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WammerJammer (profile), 7 Mar 2010 @ 6:58am

Of course
Why do you keep glorifying Murdoch by even paying attention to him? He's a thief. Period. Haven't you figured it out yet? If you acquire more money than other people you obviously had to steal it from them. It's simple math, one person gets more, other people get less. The more millionaires there are, the more poor people get ripped off.
But in reality the consumer does rule if only they band together. I don't buy Murdoch's products. Why would I support a thief? None of the rich guys are on your side and none of them give a damn about you. Check Bill Gates the great philanthropist, all of his money got stolen from us by selling a buggy product and then it gets sent to help a foreign country. Granted they may need help, but we have starving children in the US also.
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vastrightwing, 7 Mar 2010 @ 2:08pm

Theft
Since we’ve been trained that copying is theft, FOX/Murdock is now guilty of theft. Of course they will parse meaning and spin this that no, theft is only when consumers copy, big corporations don’t steal, they borrow and this is OK.
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Hephaestus (profile), 7 Mar 2010 @ 5:17pm

Re: start suing him people
Wanna help me make him eat his lunch I have an idea for an app. Its called paper boy, you give it what you are interested in, it sends the news off of every blog and open paper to your iphone, blackberry, ipad etc.

The news becomes articles of interest not newspapers. News by article is actually where we are all heading and the reason for the imminent failure of the news papers. Peoples habits have changed.
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Hephaestus (profile), 7 Mar 2010 @ 5:20pm

Re: Re: Re: Question
Its linked -vs- unlinked mentality. Flat -vs- hypertexted.
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Hephaestus (profile), 7 Mar 2010 @ 5:43pm

Re: Murdoch vs. bloggers
"I can tell you that the majority (2/3? 3/4? who cares?) of stories out there originate at newspapers in one form or another."

3/4 - Three out of four stories. Are you an idiot? You are talking mainstream press. Here are some really neat non mainstream press stories for you ...

Super conductors now run at 250 kelvin

Humanity is working on self replicating machines

Crowd sourcing and monetary prizes works better than any corporation or government agency to advance science. (no link go find it for yourself)

The list goes on ...

99.99999% of the news isnt done by mainstream media. Main stream media is just eye candy that people read because they are patterned to and in the past it was the only source for news. New papers are becoming less relevant. When a 70 year old with an iPhone sits down next to me and gets news alerts, you know its over for the newspapers and main stream media.
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Anonymous Coward, 7 Mar 2010 @ 5:49pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: No credibility
Thank you, Captain Obvious!
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Hephaestus (profile), 7 Mar 2010 @ 6:01pm

Re: Re: As old as the hills.
"But it's rather hypocritical of Rupert to call it stealing when done to him, but then have his own papers do it, don't you think."

It is hypocritical. But it is more rationalization and placing blame. The world is changing and they cant and dont want to. So they lay blame on anyone doing better than they are. They need someone to blame because they cant compete in a more efficient system of distribution.
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Nastybutler77 (profile), 8 Mar 2010 @ 10:11am

Re: Of course
Are you a Marxist?
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Kelly, 9 Mar 2010 @ 5:19pm

Not really shocked
It's Murdoch. Are any of us really surprised by the hypocrisy. It may not be stealing legally, but it's bad form not to acknowledge the original source for the idea. At the very least, Fine deserved a link back to his blog.
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