Sunday, November 21, 2010

PD Lack of Transparency or Just Dishonesty

I posted a few months ago on an article by Ted Diadiun, the "Reader Representative" for the Plain Dealer and Cleveland.com by extension. In that post, Ted is warning us all that we need to be wary of commenting and publishing online. Clearly the nuance of that column is to leave to the schooled professionals since they are aware of what they are doing.



In a separate article point out by Jill over at Writeslikeshetalks, we find Ted trying to take the high ground on ethics in context of the Keith Olberman donations to political campaigns. Even the title suggest the Plain Dealer has irreproachable ethics: Avoiding even a hint of bias: Ted Diadiun. But I like this quote:



The Plain Dealer, like most newspapers, has a list of ethical guidelines developed over the years:



In the context of the article, the ethical guidelines refer to political donations, or rather the the avoidance of political donations by editors, journalists and photographers. But my question is what about copyright infringement and/or lack of transparency or attribution.



You see this morning I came across two different articles. The articles were the same, word for word - or as close to it as I bothered to check. Both articles start:



How did an agency created to protect the public become the target of so much public scorn?


The first one I came across was on Cleveland.com titled TSA has met the enemy -- and they are us (video and poll). The second one I found via Google Buzz that was on Huffingon Post entitled TSA At The 'Tipping Point': Passenger Anger At Airport Pat-Downs Threatens To Boil Over. Read both of those posted about 30 minutes apart. Word for word, no? But more importantly look at the attribution on Huffington:



huffington attribution to AP


Notice the clear attribution to AP? Now take a look at the PD/Cleveland.com attribution:



pd gives no attribution to AP


So Ted, what's your ethical guidelines say about that? Or are you going to claim end user (journalist) mistake?



I don't know about you, but for me it begs the question of what else on Cleveland.com isn't given proper attribution.



P.S. I have printed both to PDF prior to any updates on Cleveland.com just in case it changes. But I am sure the only attribution to AP on Cleveland.com was to the photograph included in the article.



UPDATE:Credit where credit is due. Cleveland.com has updated the article with proper attribution two hours after it was published and within minutes of me tweeting about it.


new AP credit TSA article cleveland.com

Nice job guys.


 

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