A blogger, Larisa Alexandrovna, spent scads of time documenting changes in security clearance policies. She shared this information with others, and after getting it checked by others, released her work. The work apparently showed a tightening of requirements for granting security clearances. Since one of the items of interest was guidance on sexual behavior, some GBLT groups picked up on it, shared the story with the Associated Press, and said the AP needed to cover this story. How AP handled it was not quite professional…
In response, several GLBT groups contacted us and issued a statement. We gave the advocacy groups our notes and article, which they then took to the AP and demanded that the story be covered. The AP was given our article and maybe our notes.
On March 14, 2006, the AP did their own article, left out any attribution to me or my publication and lifted not only my research but also whole sections of my article for their own (making cosmetic changes of course).
We contacted an AP senior editor and ombudsmen both and both admitted to having had the article passed on to them, and both stated that they viewed us as a blog and because we were a blog, they did not need to credit us.
Hmmmm, so stealing from bloggers isn’t plagiarism? Interesting.
[tags]AP plagiarism[/tags]