Copy and paste – the journalist’s top tools?
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Isn’t Google News great? Here at Local Towers one of our guilty pleasures is surfing Google to see who’s quoting us as their source – it’s always a good ego trip.
What’s slightly less fun is to find that people are copying and pasting your stuff without crediting you. When the culprit is Xinhua, the state news agency in China (run by the Propaganda Ministry), I rather doubt a phone call pointing out the finer points of press ethics will cut much ice. Compare this article we published yesterday…
Professional boxing has been illegal in Sweden since 1970, but it could be time to start booking ringside seats after the new Martial Arts Delegation has its first meeting in Örebro today, Dagens Nyheter reports.
…with this from Xinhua this morning:
Professional boxing has been illegal in Sweden since 1970, but it could be time to start booking ringside seats after the new Martial Arts Delegation has its first meeting in Orebro, local media reported on Wednesday.
Xinhua continues…
The new law came into being in order to protect those who participate in violent sports from brain injury. As a result it is possible that professional boxing will soon be welcomed back into the Swedish sporting community, if it is seen to take the necessary precautions, Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter reported.
“I don’t like professional boxing the way it is now, but I hope it is allowed because it would be good for the boxers,” ringside doctor Sanna Neselius told the newspaper.
The only word in that excerpt changed by Xinhua was ‘newspaper’. In the original story Sanna Neselius was quoted as talking to The Local. Because that’s what she did.
Xinhua have also plagiarised us in this article about Saddam Hussein, (The Local’s article), a piece about the elections (The Local’s piece), and in this piece about whaling (The Local’s piece).
They’ve also done it here (TL’s piece), here (TL’s article), and here (TL’s article). Oh, and here (TL).
Not sure whether to be flattered or indignant. Getting your facts from other publications is standard journalistic practice (although it’s a good idea to check them first), but it’s generally considered good form to at least rephrase the information and credit your source.
As another journalist points out…
“Within the traditional media, certain media reporters have abandoned truth in news and ignored professional ethnics to use easy and convenient Internet tools to plagiarize news. This type of behavior is becoming more frequent, and has become a huge public evil for journalism.”
That was written by Yuan Bixia, a journalist working at… you guessed it… Xinhua.
November 17th, 2006 at 4:37 pm
You have now seen part of the iceberg that is above water. The words ‘blatant’ and ‘shameless’ don’t even come close to describing the situation here. Think of it this way: for every word of copy plagiarized from The Local, another mass incident goes unreported in Xinhua.
Cheers
PRC, Guangdong, Shenzhen
November 17th, 2006 at 7:07 pm
Kinesisk journalistik: klipp och klistra i smyg?
November 18th, 2006 at 6:17 am
Xinhua=Chinese for “blood sucking trolls.”
US journo,
Hong Kong, Shenzhen, PRC
November 20th, 2006 at 11:26 am
Bad Chinese. But they are doing what Swedish newspapers have been doing for years. Both Aftonbladet and Expressen have “correspondents” in the UK who regularly copy and paste from the tabloids without sourcing. When the issue is raised, they quote “says the Sun” for a week or so, then its (dirty) business as usual.
November 23rd, 2006 at 3:30 pm
[...] China’s state news service Xinhua has been copying from The Local. [...]
November 24th, 2006 at 4:34 pm
You should understand that you’re dealing with very young people who are more like translators than journalists. They’re English grads mostly and they have a very heavy quota of stories to meet. What they have done is a cardinal journalistic sin and I will tell them not to do it again. They will be embarrassed when I show them this I am sure.
Please don’t be too, too hard on them. They are certainly not the only ones in the world.
Ever heard a rip and read newscast. It happens all the time.
And don’t jump to the worst of conclusions about China’s journalism. It’s not the same for sure but there’s a lot there that’s pretty good and it is progressing. English blogs only pick out the worst and the accumulated total makes my colleagues an undeserving laugh stock. There are a couple of pretty good stories on the website today, if you care to read and take an interest in something not directly related to your own world.
Sorry I’m starting to rant.
JBS
May 24th, 2010 at 11:32 am
[...] had our own problems at The Local with our material being copied, not just in Sweden but also globally. But Kelly is talking about a lot more than cut-and-paste journalism. He’s talking about [...]