How The Mainstream Media Stole Our News Story Without Credit

[app103]

You hear so much crying from the mainstream media about bloggers stealing and republishing their content without credit, but you rarely hear about the reverse, where the mainstream media is ripping off bloggers and not giving them proper credit, not disclosing them as the source of their information. But it does happen and probably more often than we know about.

Here is one such case of the mainstream media ripping off a blogger and not giving him the credit he should have had, and in many cases giving someone else the credit, instead.

On Friday, I broke a tasty story about a woman suing Google, claiming bad directions caused her to get hit by a vehicle. Today, I discover our story is everywhere, often with no attribution. Come along and watch how the mainstream media, which often claims bloggers rip it off, does a little stealing of its own.

Woman Follows Google Maps “Walking” Directions, Gets Hit, Sues was the story I posted on Friday afternoon, Pacific Time. I was tipped to the lawsuit by Gary Price of ResourceShelf. Gary hadn’t written about it himself but thought Search Engine Land would be interested in it. He came across it through the regular monitoring of search-related news that he does across a variety of resources (Gary watches many, many things — he’s a research guru extraordinaire). Gary downloaded a copy of the suit via the PACER Service and sent it to me.

No one had written about the case before I put my article up. I know. I checked before publishing. There was nothing out there. So what happened next?

http://daggle.com/mainstream-media-stole-news-story-credit-1906

[app103]

I have noticed quite often that TV news broadcasts often credit "Twitter" as being where they get a tip for a news story, not actually crediting the blogger they are following or the site the link they clicked lead them to, as the actual source. It seems like it's cool and trendy to stick the word "twitter" into everything, as a substitute for proper credit.

I am sure they know that Twitter is service with millions of people and not a single entity posting all that stuff, so there is no excuse for what they are doing.

And before that they credited just "the internet" as if it was all published by one entity, too. So this is a practice that has been going on for quite some time and it shows no signs of letting up. In fact, it seems as though it's getting worse.

[Renegade]

I'll bet that Danny Sullivan is happy with everything as the Daggle articles gave him a fantastic opportunity for more attention.

[ecaradec]

Not completly related but :
Some years ago when I was a boy scout chief, a small TV channel came to make a reportage on our troup. At a time, we had a sort of celebration and I told them that they should record it. They didn't, but just after we finished, they said : oh, that was great, could you do it again ? Since that day, I know how fake news can be, and I have had lesser esteem for journalism.

[zridling]

TV media personalities never miss an opportunity to tell everyone how everything on "the internets" is stupid and what idiots bloggers are, but entire channels (and newspapers) provide no original content you can't find on hundreds of sites online. And they wonder why they have fewer viewers/readers every year!

[rxantos]

Usually you see the news months after you already read it on the Internet. Mainstream news usually just buy the news. Is rare for them to do something original. Specially technology ones.

That is why CNN news looked like a briefing from the pentagon when Bush and Cheney where lying about the weapons of mass destruction. And why the 911 was never properly investigated as mainstream only focused on the official version and nothing more.

Sure, you need to take everything from the Internet with a grain of salt. But this is also true for mainstream news.