Popular Science on line faces grumbles it is putting its own bylines on writing lifted from press releases and other pubs.
News aggregation by websites, lifting other people’s stuff from their original publishers’ sites and putting one’s own spin, or just name, on it is part of the new media. That’s what we do here at the Tracker – take other people’s writing or broadcasting, link to it or summarize it, and put our names at the bottom. It is important, however, to make crystal clear the distinction between what we write or provide on our own steam, and what others did already (and to give original authors and publishers due and unmistakable credit, prominent direct links to originals, etc).
The well-known magazine Popular Science has a website that does aggregating as well. It often employs a hybrid style – putting at the top of some posts its own staffer’s byline, with a credit at the bottom to the source that actually provided the information rewritten and re-reported to varying degrees at Pop Sci.
Late last year the writer of a piece that ran originally in IEEE Spectrum magazine complained directly to Popular Science that one of the Pop Sci bylines ran on top of a light rephrasing of his reporting. He called it a rip off of a science writer’s work – a practice that erodes the ability of freelancers to make a living. I then asked John Mahoney, web editor at Popular Science what was going on. He defended the practice, saying they always did provide a link to original material and adding that “we would never consciously screw over other writers or reporters on the web.”
Nonetheless, ructions continue. Today Wilson de Silva, editor of COSMOS Magazine in Australia, sent me the link to an on line to-do over original writing and subsequent rehashings, and credits therefor, at the Australian edition of Popular Science. It is the second item in a post, rip-and-read science journalism at a site in Oz called Crikey. The assertion there, bolstered by links, is that Pop Sci re-ran two university press releases with hardly a change but put its own bylines on them. Pop Sci’s Australian editor is quoted to say that recycling press releases is “standard practice across the science magazine industry.” De Silva responded to that post in a readers’ comment – which you can see if you scroll down a bit here. One of da Silva’s ripostes: “This is not the case at COSMOS, or at any other science magazine that I know of.” He then links to COSMOS articles that did arise in part from a press release but included extensive additional quotes and evidence of reporting.
Da Silva reports that some of his examples of Pop Sci’s apparent regurgitation of stories from COSMOS or press releases have since disappeared from easy view at the Pop Sci site – but as nothing truly dies on the web, he ran down the originals here and here.
What to make of all this? The specific examples open upon the long-standing issue among web journalists, aggregators, and other new-media hybrids about intellectual property, uncredited liftings of prose, outright plagiarism, and transparency of provenance. There are hardly any cops, courts, or other enforcers of rules.
One problem may be the blurring of distinction between using without attribution a full-b0re journalist’s story at a news outlet (IEEE Spectrum can be considered such), and using a public information officer’s press release, in both cases putting one’s byline on it. I have seen many examples while working at the tracker of news stories, emblazoned with the immediate publisher’s bylines, but reporting information and using quotes identical to what was in press releases. Is there an ethical distinction between not identifying prominently and immediately, by name and source, what one takes from a press release and what one takes from an independent journalist? My instinct is to say yes. But in the vanishing old-timey world of traditional journalism some outfits considered unattributed lifting of quotes, even from press releases, to be a firing offense. Codifying such things in today’s world is difficult.
- Charlie Petit
March 24th, 2010 at 5:12 pm
I felt the same way when they glommed onto my SciAm article on an electric one-man jetpack-like plane, a story no one else had:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=nasa-one-man-stealth-plane
They linked to my story early on, attributed only at the very end. Wired did the same thing. My story is just third on Google, behind theirs.
It was suggested to me by a colleague that instead of complaining about it, I should do the writeups for those other mags myself, being a freelance, after all.
March 24th, 2010 at 5:56 pm
I would say the practice of ripping off content is just as common as rewriting press releases.
I had a number of articles while working for AAP, where my copy was attributed to someone else. Just as bad were articles that contained quotes I obtained via a one-on-one interview.
Like COSMOS, ABC Science takes pride in writing original content. There are many others including Discovery, Reuters and New Scientist. In fact, we take pride in searching for stories before the PR departments get their press releases out there.
March 24th, 2010 at 11:44 pm
Nothing new with all this. In the late 60s when I was a general assignment reporter – cops, fires, courts, visiting authors, etc — at the Rochester Times-Union, I more than once wanted to call a radio stations and say, “Hay, if your going to read my story, read my byline.”
We “real reporters,” considered the folks who did that nothing more than “announcers.” “They’re in radio because they already moved their lips when they read….” was one of our jibes.
How things have changed: Today’s NPR makes me regret all the slurs I ever aimed at radio people… NPR is making many newspapers look like the print equivalent of a local 500-watt, AM station owed and programmed by a local car dealer.
March 25th, 2010 at 10:40 am
“Is there an ethical distinction between not identifying prominently and immediately, by name and source, what one takes from a press release and what one takes from an independent journalist? My instinct is to say yes.”
Charlie, no offense meant, but this statement made me laugh my socks off. It’s like saying that stealing from rich people is okay since they have money but stealing from hard-working sloggers is wrong ’cause they have less. Where’s the logic in that?
Those of us who are science PIOs see this all the time, all across the media. At best, reporters will pop a new lead on our copy and paste in the remaining 80 percent or so. They may or may not link to the original release, which allows a comparison showing how much is actually “borrowed.”
Our view is that (1) it comes with the territory and our copy is meant to be used in the first place, and that (2) the person adopting our copy is basically saying they can’t do any better than we did. Either outcome is okay, though the latter is somewhat sad to us old-timers.
What doesn’t make sense to me is the argument that the same action changes from right to wrong depending on who is involved, but that justification seems to be growing in popularity as the media changes.
An obvious difference is that the goal of science PIOs is to get the information “out there” while the goal of freelancers is — and rightfully so — to get paid for their work. But the point still remains that putting your name on somebody else’s work is still wrong.
March 25th, 2010 at 11:33 am
Hey Earle – You got me, but I did say merely that my instinct was to say yes. I was too sly by half. You can’t trust those instincts, you know. Instincts are like first impressions – you really should not rely on them without further evidence. Like, my first impression of Earle Holland was that here is a decent, hard-working, congenial and honest fellah. It took a long time to learn whether that was correct. Whattayaknow, it is!
March 25th, 2010 at 11:48 am
You’re way too kind! I think the whole issue of ownership and control of our writing, as true as that should be, is going to be increasingly changed by the evolution of the media, whether we like it or not. The ‘ethics” of the field that we all grew up with are, based on common practice, somewhat fossilized at this point. And they’ll probably become moreso in the future. Maybe it’s just an inevitable socialism of information.
And as for “instinct,” I was warned early on that there’s little difference between “instinct” and “instinked.”