How The Mainstream Media Stole Our News Story Without Credit
by Danny Sullivan on June 1, 2010
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?
I’ll Steal Your Image, But I Won’t Link To You
Let’s start with the Daily Mail’s story here. We get no attribution, but I know they found the story from us. My evidence? They’re using a screenshot I made, without my permission and without credit.
It’s a screenshot of the route from Google Maps. Sure, the Daily Mail could have generated their own route using Google Maps. But, they didn’t. “Their” image is cropped exactly the same as mine and includes an arrow I added to point to a warning on Google Maps.
Since the image was created by me, for Search Engine Land, and is a transformation of the original Google “work,” the copyright that the Daily Mail is violating belongs to Search Engine Land.
The Financial Post does the same thing, uses my exact image — so they had to have seen my story — but they don’t bother to link over or provide attribution.
Postscript: Jameson Berkow from the Financial Post got in touch soon after I posted my story to apologize, saying there was originally a link to our article in his piece but which got lost along with other links through some technical glitch (which I can totally understand happening. I’ve lived through those myself). When he fixed the missing links, ours got overlooked accidentally but now has been restored. I’m also good with the usage of our illustration, since the article links over to me.
I’ll Link To Your Source Document, But Not You
Over at PC World, a different twist. Rather than link to my story, they linked to the source documentation — the lawsuit — that I uploaded to my personal Scribd account.
I created this account on Friday, so it’s not something you’d just stumble upon in the course of independent news gathering. Maybe PC World saw someone else linking to it and so never saw my story.
Maybe. Then again, as part of the news reporting process, I think tracking down originating sources is important. Where did this document come from? The Scribd file links over to my original story. If you wanted to backtrack the origin of this document (say, perhaps, to know if it was actually real), you’d probably head over to my story.
Either PC World did this, and didn’t think credit was necessary, or it failed to fully fact check the story.
Postscript: PC World has added a link now, thanks, and the author commented about coming across my story after finding other ones about it.
By Omission, Someone Else Becomes The Source
Regardless of how it happened, the PC World story is an example of something else, how a second party can become the originating source.
That PC World story? CBS News cited it as the source for its own story. That, again, makes you question some of the news reporting that is supposed to go on by the mainstream media. The reporting, that accounts often say, blogs themselves fail to do.
CBS simply seems to have summarized the PC World story, ending with a link to PC World plus a link to the complaint itself — the complaint I uploaded. Clearly no one tried to track down the complaint’s origin more. No apparent attempt to independently verify if the case was real. (FYI, unlike CBS, I actually did call the legal firm in the case on Friday).
That CBS story also flowed out to affiliated CBS news stations, such as here and here.
Postscript: CBS, after seeing this, added a link — thanks!
Over at the Atlantic Wire, PC World again gets cited, but not us. News.com also is cited in that Atlantic Wire round-up of commentary on the case. Despite the fact News.com prominently links to us (thanks!), that doesn’t make it into the Atlantic’s story.
Time Magazine also does the same, linking to the Scribd document and the PC World story.
AOL News did similarly, linking to the complaint — which was almost certainly found by reading our story — but not to our story itself. As a result, places like the New York Daily News, nineMSN and The Register cite AOL News as the source.
Postscript: AOL has since added a link, thanks!
It’s not just mainstream media that screwed up, however. Even Gizmodo, a well known tech blog, overlooked us. They linked to Fortune, which in turn linked to us. But we didn’t get a mention at Gizmodo.
Postscript: Originally I’d had written further below:
Semi-thanks to Gizmodo. They linked to Fortune, which linked to us. But hey Gizmodo, next time, show a brother-blog some love and give us a direct link.
It came up in comments that this was being too soft on Gizmodo, compared to some of the mainstream publications that I dinged for linking to an intermediary source. I agreed, explained why this happened and have changed the story to ding them properly.
Having said that, about an hour after this story when live, Gizmodo added us as a source like this:
[Search Engine Land via Fortune]
I’ve often seen them show the story trail across multiple sources this way, which I think is well done.
Want to see attribution done right? Over at Inc, they appared to have spotted the PC World story first. But further down, there’s this:
First reported by SearchEngineLand
Thanks! And thanks to others who linked, including:
* Google Watch
* News.com.au
* TechDirt
* Toronto Star
The News, It Just Sprang From Our Forehead
Though I’m a traditionally trained reporter, most of my journalism has been online, where documenting how a story has been found is both easily done (through links) and often done. Bloggers generally explain how they discovered a news item.
As a result, bloggers also set themselves up for accusations that they’ve just “ripped off” some traditional news outlet. By carefully listing an originating source, and sometimes a “via” source, they expose how news flows.
In contrast, a traditional media outlet typically does not document how a story came to life. It’s all a mystery. News just seems to emerge magically out of thin air in the middle of a newsroom. Or, it’s down to all those hard-working reporters out there defending democracy despite newspapers earning less these days because of all those rip-off bloggers.
For example, the Salt Lake Tribune published the Google Maps story yesterday, three days after our story went up. How did the paper discover the news?
In a lawsuit filed last week in U.S. District Court for Utah…
Well, lawsuits are public. Newspapers regularly check on them, in their areas. In fact, that’s exactly what Tribune reporter Chris Smart told me, when I called him today to ask about the origin of his story. Smart said the Tribune has a federal courts reporter who checks for filings each day.
I used to work for daily newspapers. I know courts reporters do this. But our story went up late on Friday afternoon Pacific time. How come the Tribune didn’t have its own story then? A full day had passed from when the case was filed to when it could have been written up. But it wasn’t.
Did the reporter come in on Saturday, Sunday or Monday — over a holiday weekend — and check the records?
There was some discussion between Chris and someone else in the newsroom, then I was handed over to the federal courts reporter herself. She eventually said that someone in the newsroom heard a rumor about this case, and she was called in to help locate it on Monday using the PACER system.
Now let’s imagine how the Tribune’s story would have looked, if that fact had been reported:
After hearing a rumor about a case involving Google Maps, which someone saw on TV or read on a blog or we don’t really know where, we checked court records ourselves to find the case which says….
Whatever rumor the Tribune heard, which finally got them to cover a story three days late in their own backyard, that rumor started with our story. Despite this, the Tribune became the originating source as cited by places such as About.com, the San Francisco Business Times and elsewhere.
Postscript: The SF Business Times, after seeing this, kindly added a link!
Beyond the Tribune, there are plenty of other places where the story was apparently just discovered out of the blue, including:
* KSL TV & Newsradio
* DB Techno
* ChannelWeb
* Metro
I especially like how this happens over at The Sun. The story there, by “Staff Reporter,” gives no clue about how a British tabloid owned by News Corporation came across a story that happened over 5,000 miles away. Wire report? Saw it on a blog? Is there a Sun reporter based in Park City, Utah?
We’ll Cite You, But Not Link To You
Mashable reported on our story, and like a reputable blog, they linked to us. But Mashable’s content appears to be syndicated into places like the Sydney Morning Herald — and our link got dropped in that.
That’s bad for us, as we lose traffic. It’s also bad for Sydney Morning Herald readers, who may want to read our original story.
Related to this, both Fox News Memphis and Fox News LA cite Mashable for their story, which makes me think all Fox News affiliates are sharing this piece. Since Mashable is credited, was it too hard to cite Search Engine Land as the original source?
The Salt Lake Tribune also gets cited, which underscores a point I made earlier. Instead of original reporting going on, plenty of mainstream publications are happy to simply “echo chamber” a story that originated on a blog in the same way that blogs are often accused of doing to mainstream publications.
And Now, It’s From The AP
The Associated Press has filed on the story. Here’s the entire thing so far (the story will no doubt grow as they do more reporting). I’m going to reprint the entire thing. I feel this is allowed by fair use, as it’s required to show the entire story in order to fully comment about it:
PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — A woman who says she relied on Google for walking directions in Utah that got her hit on a major roadway has filed a lawsuit against the Internet company claiming it supplied unsafe directions.
Lauren Rosenberg filed the $100,000 lawsuit Thursday in U.S. District Court in Utah. It also names a motorist she says hit her.
A Google spokeswoman also did not return a message from The Associated Press seeking comment.
Rosenberg says she used her BlackBerry to download walking directions from Google Maps between two Park City addresses.
The Los Angeles County resident claims the directions led her to walk through Park City on a road without sidewalks that she says isn’t safe for pedestrians.
Rosenberg couldn’t be reached Tuesday. Her attorneys did not return messages.
As with the Tribune, where’s the information about how the AP discovered this story? Did the reporter come across someone else writing about it? If so, how about a credit? And if so, did they actually pull the case itself from PACER? Or did they download the document I put out there, like many others seem to have done?
Speaking of the Tribune, that paper is owned by MediaNewsGroup, which is led by Dean Singleton, who is also chairman of the Associated Press. Singleton and the AP have been vocal that blogs often rip them off for news content.
My Do Newspapers Owe Google “Fair Share” Fees For Researching Stories? story has another example of a story that emerged from blogs and into the AP wire without attribution.
I think that if the AP or traditional publications like the Salt Lake Tribune documented exactly how they “found” news in the way blogs do, there’d be a fair reassessment of just how much flows back and forth. It’s not all a one way street, from traditional news outlets to blogs.
Can’t We All Get Along?
That brings me back to another piece I wrote last year, Blogs & Mainstream Media: We Can & Do Get Along. I’d like to see a lot less finger-pointing and much more acknowledgment that the origin of news is a messy business.
So why am I pointing fingers in this case? To help keep things even. I think it’s very well known how traditional sources get cited by alternative ones. But while the opposite is true, that’s a story that’s rarely illustrated.
I’ll also add that I know mistakes and misunderstandings can happen with attribution. I try to get it right, but I know I’m not perfect. I also know there are times we’ve reported on a story, credited someone else but nonetheless ended up as a originating source. News is messy. But we should all try to do better attribution.
Postscript: Aside from the fairness of attribution, linking to sources brings those sources support with traffic. Our story at Search Engine Land has had 30,000 page views just from being mentioned in the Toronto Star’s write-up. If other places like the Daily Mail or the Sun had linked, we’d have even more visitors, which is important to a relatively small publication. My Thanks For The Link, Mainstream Media — Now Let’s Have More! post from 2007 has more thoughts on wanting to see more mainstream linking.
225Share
54
* Share/Bookmark
{ 104 comments… read them below or add one }
Next Comments ?
1 Hugo Guzman June 1, 2010 at 11:56 am
Really disappointing. Might be worthwhile to buy a domain and set it up to crowd-source an ongoing list of instances where this happens.
The mainstream reader needs to know that things are not as they seem (i.e. mainstream publishers aren’t necessarily better or more qualified than independent publishers)
2 Marshall Kirkpatrick June 1, 2010 at 11:56 am
(in newspaper guy voice) “you are a tiny pissant, you blah-ger, your complaints are irrelevant and there’s nothing you can do about it. why don’t you go get a real job at a real journalistic outfit? oh, because you are too busy destroying that fine institution with your off-the-cuff ‘reporting’ which is irrelevant anyway. also, i have never heard of you before and even thinking about twitter makes me want to wet my pants.”
3 Anne June 1, 2010 at 12:04 pm
I understand your frustration but I think complaining about someone taking a Google screenshot is pushing it. The thing is, this story happened whether or not you reported it. Nobody has to credit you because you are not the story. I feel your pain, but you flagged up information in the public domain and other people used it too. There’s a limit to how much you can moan about that.
4 Anne June 1, 2010 at 12:07 pm
Also, re this:
“After hearing a rumor about a case involving Google Maps, which someone saw on TV or read on a blog or we don’t really know where, we checked court records ourselves to find the case which says….”
News stories aren’t written that way. No editor would have let that pass. And the fact is competing news outlets aren’t out to show brother-love.
5 Danny Sullivan June 1, 2010 at 12:21 pm
Anne, they didn’t take a Google screenshot. Read the story again. They took a Google screenshot I had specifically modified. There’s plenty to “moan” about there. It’s a copyright violation, pure and simple.
I also addressed that the information is in the public domain. I understand news reports aren’t written to document how reporters come across the public domain info that they find. I’m also well aware of how traditional publications will routinely avoid crediting that they discovered news in a rival. I covered that in a previous piece that I mentioned:
http://daggle.com/do-newspapers-owe-google-fees-for-researching-stories-611
But the point is that you have a number of traditional publications complaining that bloggers are somehow ripping them off, that they somehow originate all the news out there (plenty of which is also in the public domain). They’re attracting the ear of people like the FTC seeking special protections:
So this is less a moan and more, as I said at the end, a little illustration for balance in that debate.
6 Ben Griffiths June 1, 2010 at 12:21 pm
Danny, I know it wouldn’t help this article, but wouldn’t it be even a little bit funny if you broke the scribd url and only updated the link on Search Engine Land? It’s too bad you don’t host the file yourself instead of scribd, you could upload a different document in its place, or even better redirect it to this article.
7 Blake June 1, 2010 at 12:24 pm
Unfortunately, Danny, most mainstream news consumers don’t care who scooped the story, they just want to hear the story. As long as that’s the case, the origin of the scoop will go undetected and scoopers will often (but not always) be overlooked.
8 Robb Montgomery June 1, 2010 at 12:29 pm
Dude, Good story. Good moral. Elephant in the room and all that.
But first you need to copy edit the really, truly, glaring typos in your first couple of grafs. Yowzers. Hurts your pro-journo claims to credibility.
It is ironic that broadcasters have done to newspapers (for decades) what you now claim they are doing to you.
How many times have you heard a story on local radio say “According to published reports.” instead of the truth – “An exclusive report from the Chicago Sun-Times?”
9 Vadim Lavrusik June 1, 2010 at 12:31 pm
Danny, thanks for the shout about Mashable. I’ll definitely look into why the links got dropped with the syndication and see if that’s something we can resolve.
Vadim Lavrusik, Community Manager
10 Tamar Weinberg June 1, 2010 at 12:31 pm
Hey Danny,
I’m responsible for Mashable’s syndication deal with the Sydney Morning Herald, and you bring up a really important point. I’ll contact them directly and ensure that all article links are kept intact.
This is a brand new program with their publication, so we’re ironing out the kinks, but your concern is extremely valid.
Thanks for spotting that.
11 Tamar Weinberg June 1, 2010 at 12:33 pm
p.s. I did not see Vadim’s message beforehand. 😀
12 Julie Drizin June 1, 2010 at 12:37 pm
Thanks for sharing your experience with mainstream media “borrowing” news from the blogosphere without proper credit and attribution. It is ironic that MSM claim that blogs steal their content when they are actually mining cyberspace for stories to tell. In the echo chamber of news, I always appreciate knowing “who’s on first” and where the seed of a story sprouted.
Julie Drizin
@AIRMQ2
13 Colin Mathews June 1, 2010 at 12:40 pm
Danny, I feel your pain. I’m not one of the “die, newspapers, die!” crowd, but the self-righteousness of the professional media about where their stories come from sometimes tempts me to join up with them. And as you know from your background, it’s an old joke that the local TV news would have nothing to run if they couldn’t read the newspapers in the morning. None of them have any shame.
I wrote a post about similar behavior (though of content with less original reporting than your own post) ) — and later at newspapers (which I hope to see survive, even though I’m now at a non-profit journalism outlet called InvestigateWest). You should have been given credit and linked to by outlets that simply lifted your work and repackaged it. Those that did original reporting? I’m not so sure about those. It would be different if you’d done *lots* of reporting, but going on PACER and reading a suit that others can read, too? That’s arguable, I’d say.
Let me also echo Robb Montgomery and thank you for fixing the typos. However, re-read your lede, man. I think what you want is “Come along and watch HOW the mainstream media,” etc., sted “Come along and watch OUT the mainstream media,” etc. (I’d have e-mailed you privately on the last point but couldn’t quickly find an e-mail address.)
Keep up the good work,
Robert McClure
InvestigateWest
Seattle
27 Danny Sullivan June 1, 2010 at 2:04 pm
By the way you used Google Maps and took snapshot , thats copyright right there 🙂
Ok enough about dumping sh** on you my friend.
Wow thats just flat out wrong! Crush them Danny!
32 Rick Bucich June 1, 2010 at 2:57 pm
External footer links are nofollow as well.
Welcome to the world of blogging.
34 Joshua Unseth June 1, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Was absolutely maddening.
39 netmeg June 1, 2010 at 3:59 pm
Annoying? Yes. Wrong? Certainly, for all the reasons you cite. New? Hardly.
Sorry. Sucks. At least you have a blog where you can talk about it.
45 Lonny June 1, 2010 at 5:23 pm
Big Deal.
47 wombat June 1, 2010 at 6:11 pm
Danny, I saw your story balloon on techmeme.
So this story has an overhead cost that those who link but don’t attribute aren’t sharing.