Murdoch Rag Caught Stealing From Director’s Blog
Published: November 20, 2009
Remember “Shaun of the Dead” – the best damned movie to come out of Britain in roughly 400 years? Then you’ll remember the director – Edward Wright – who previously worked with ADORABLE Simon Pegg on “Spaced”, which I’m also sure some of you have seen too, and if you haven’t, do. Backstory now in place – Edward Wright wrote a nice thing on his own blog about Edward Woodward, the actor who sadly died earlier this week. That was all fine and good – until The Times (of London) stole Wright’s blog entry.
Not only did they steal it. They also edited it without asking, which, seeing as they took it without asking, seems par for the course. Wright found out about it, and – well – he wasn’t very happy.
“Is it appropriate for a national newspaper to reprint my personal tribute to Edward Woodward as if it were an article written for them?”
The stock answer is usually “no”. For obvious reasons.
“They just lifted it from my blog without asking. And cut off the entire end section about my last meeting with him … I’m not talking about quotes. Am talking about the entire article. But with edits they made that make me look ill informed and unfeeling … Perhaps they would like to send the fee they would pay the commissioned writer of such an article to Edward’s memorial… .”
That was on Thursday. So far, so bad. Now, on Friday, The Times issues a sobbing apology, what with them being thieves and stealing stuff they shouldn’t and all that.
“We acknowledge that we made an error in failing to credit Edgar Wright’s blog as the source of his tribute to Edward Woodward, which we published in edited form on November 17. We dealt with the matter promptly both online and in the paper as soon as it came to our attention, and we are happy to confirm that we have made a contribution to Mr Woodward’s memorial, as suggested by Mr Wright.”
Oh well – that’s okay then. But, before you go, I hope you note the irony inherent within this rather disgraceful act of thievery – The Times is owned by one R. Murdoch,who is currently attempting to bolt down his online versions so people like you and I have to pay to read them, instead of reading them for free. So it seems to be okay for a News International rag to steal copy without attribution, or indeed payment – or indeed notification – but not for you to read the stolen copy for free.
Rupert Murdoch is 78 and can’t die soon enough.
Oh I have such a crush on Simon Pegg but why oh why did he do Run Fat Boy Run? Ross really screwed that movie up!
So a newspaper can take anyone’s blog post, edit it and then publish it as their own, with no credit – until they get caught? Holy hell, if a blogger did even the slightest of that AND credited the real author, could you IMAGINE the newspaper’s reaction?
This story is yet another example of how the newspaper industry thumbs its nose at even the IDEA of blogs being legitimate news outlets, while their whole industry goes to hell in a handbasket (could someone please explain that saying to me, please?).
Denial is a sad, sad river somewhere.
@SfBirdie: The origins are slightly unclear, but the first recorded usage of “hell in a hand basket” is pretty exact.
I think they credited that it was Wright’s work, but they didn’t ask his permission to reprint what he’d written. Which is basically just as bad, as far as I’m concerned. Did they think he wouldn’t notice?
Also, ‘Breaker’ Morant is probably my favorite movie. We had to watch it in my history class in high school, and everyone else was hideously bored, but I loved it.
I’m kind of a nerd.
@KateKate: The credited it to Wright of course (his name is all over it), but in a way that appeared to show that he had written it for The Times.