It seems to be the week for the Associated Press to get called out for stealing the work of blogs which do original reporting. First, it was The Raw Story, and now Talking Points Memo (or, more accurately for the latter, its affiliated TPM Muckraker site).
In both of the cases detailed at the above links, the culprits in question were reporters for the Associated Press. Josh Marshall (of Talking Points Memo) nails the basic point here.
Conventional news outlets frequently chide blogs for not doing any original reporting but rather feeding off the original reporting of the mainstream media. In many cases, the criticism is true. But if that is the criticism it behooves every mainstream media outlet to enforce their own standing policies and not allow to reporters to rip off blog writers who are doing original reporting.
As someone who used to do original reporting via blog, I feel their pain. Every now and then, I’d see articles in a local publication about meetings I know the writer was never even at, and which focused on the same points I had happened to target in my pieces.
So, while I’m not doing that gig anymore, I wanted at least to join the inevitable chorus of blogs crying foul over the transgressions of the Associated Press, and any other media outlet which believes it’s permissible either to steal the original work of blogs or to report a story without crediting the blog which originally broke it.
