Why does the mainstream media ignore their own rules?

You want media ethics? I’ll give you media ethics.

Fellow blogosphere traveller Danny Sullivan is living that experience that many good bloggers have also had to suffer through: the better your work, the more likely that certain members of the mainstream media are to steal your work without attribution. He broke a great Google scoop, and most of the mainstream media pretended that their copycat stories “just leapt” from the front of their heads, as Mr. Sullivan has written.

Our experience with this phenom usually revolves around ideas, concepts and phrases winding up in the DTM without attribution. Although we get plenty of “hat tips” from upstanding types, we’ve also catalogued numerous copyright infringements and daylight robberies of our work (see representative prior post “DTM copycats at it again part 8” June 20-08).

I admire Mr. Sullivan for raising this issue, as far too often bloggers just take it for granted that many in the DTM assume that anything in the blogosphere is public property. Associated Press has rules about how bloggers should use their work, for example, and the New York Times and Wall Street Journal go to pains to acknowledge where a story was first “published”. And some Bloomberg reporters are going beyond that in the effort to bring transparency to their work (see prior post “Bloomberg sets new news standard” July 23-09). Reuters, not so sure.

When you read the odd pointed blog post here about how crazy it is to give the media special standing in Court, a standing that isn’t accorded to doctors, lawyers or police officers, be reminded that these ethical lapses occur with far too much regularity.

MRM
(hat tip CN)