Newspaper rips TV station for ’stealing’ stories
Cory Bergman July 10th, 2007
The San Antonio Express-News’ sports editor says he’s had it with KSAT’s sports guys. The newspaper’s website broke news that Spurs coach P.J. Carlesimo had landed the head coach job at the Seattle Sonics, and editor Douglas Pils said KSAT ripped it off and ran it on the air without any attribution. “The Associated Press gave us credit. Heck, even ESPN.com, the self-proclaimed worldwide leader in what we do, gave us credit. But not KSAT,” Pils writes. “The Carlesimo ‘exclusive’ is just the latest in a long list of stories that KSAT’s sports guys have stolen from the Express-News. They dance around the ethical issues surrounding this practice by using terms like ‘KSAT 12 has learned’ and ‘KSAT 12 has confirmed.’” He’s just getting warmed up. “(KSAT’s) Larry, Greggy and Davey have set a whole new standard for laziness, thievery and ineptness. And until the three stooges at KSAT man up and admit they are incapable of doing their own reporting, we’ll recognize them as journalism miscreants, a species that some day, hopefully, will become extinct.”
Ouch. I imagine these types of clashes will only intensify as the distinction between newspapers and TV stations continues to blur. We’re now fighting on the same medium — the internet — and story poaching is becoming much more of an issue. For example, if a TV station pulls a story from the local paper, rewrites it, attributes it, and posts the story online without any reporting, then in essense the TV station has stolen the story and is competing for the same page views. Attribution doesn’t matter — page views and ad impressions matter. This happens very frequently (although somewhat unintentionally) with morning newscasts. Reporters tear something out of the paper, shoot a little video, rewrite it and put it on the air with attribution. Then a web producer writes a text version of it and posts it on the TV station’s site — basically the same thing that was in the newspaper but an abbreviated version. It also happens through the Associated Press when it moves a story from the newspaper and TV sites post it online (or vice versa). All in all, these are simmering issues that will likely turn into all-out brawls in the near future.
21 Comments Add your own
1. Allen | July 10th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Sports Talk radio is really bad about this. I hear them read stories out of the morning paper all of the time and never attribute it.
2. tdc | July 10th, 2007 at 12:49 pm
yeah, you’d never think of actually LINKING to each other for stories of such interest… people might get the impression you want to become to go-to place for local info.
you wouldn’t want that.
3. Drew Robertson | July 10th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
One quibble - As of today according to Nielsen, page views are no longer important. It’s “average time spent and average number of sessions per visitor”. Would you want to spend time with these skunks at KSAT?
4. Peter Ralph | July 10th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Is there anywhere that lays down the ethics/etiquette of this type of situation?
5. Richard | July 10th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
Peter, you could see the Radio-Television News Directors Association Code of Ethics. Its linked to my name.
Seems if the yahoos at KSAT are members of the RTNDA then the paper could at least lodge a formal complaint.
But I also wonder how much of an exclusive anyone can expect to have anymore. Even if the TV jocks don’t steal from the paper’s site, others will disseminate the information without attribution. The blogger network can move pretty damn quick, and they are not signatories to any Code of Ethics (or Embargo of Information such as the current MLB/ESPN tiff).
6. Richard | July 10th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
LOL, I don’t know if the RTNDA gets this internet web thing either. If you scroll to the bottom of the Code of Ethics page you’ll find a link to download a PDF order form with which one can order a wallet size copy of the Code of Ethics.
Wouldn’t it be better if the PDF was of the actual wallet size COE, maybe 12 of ‘em, that I could print out?
7. Mark | July 10th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
To be fair to those of us in the broadcast media, newspapers are guilty of doing this as well.
Last week I had an exclusive interview, which the local paper lifted quotes from and published on their website, without name-checking our station.
To be honest, I wouldn’t have been that bothered, if it hadn’t been for the fact that we actually emailed the paper the photos they used on their website - and on their front page!
8. Jason | July 10th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
Many producers (news and sports) and reporters don’t realize that AP stories often come from the newspaper. In some markets, almost all AP stories are from the newspaper. (I know, you’d think producers and reporters would read the paper, but I digress.)
If the story appeared on the AP wire, the station could report it without attributing to the AP. As you said, Cory, it’ll be interesting how these turf wars develop. Local websites frequently post AP stories which are essentially rewrites of newspaper stories.
9. Print Guy | July 10th, 2007 at 2:55 pm
I’ve spent my career in newspaper sports departments (not in San Antonio), and the problem here is that this happens starting all the way down in small markets at the entry levels of the business. Entry-level print guys are constantly on the phone with coaches tracking down results. Entry-level TV guys are on the phone with us asking for information instead of calling the teams directly. I’ve got no problem with an occasional helping hand. But when I covered high school sports in small markets, I lost count of the times the guys from the two local TV stations called us looking for scores. Or worse, they’d hit us up at the game to give them a call later. Dude, talk to the scorekeeper or the coach of the SID and get it yourself. I think it’s a matter of making sure a broadcast journalism education includes the fundamental principle that when you’re dealing with local content, you have to collect it yourself. You can’t rip and read like you can with the NBA scores.There is no wire service for the local stuff. And I do understand that the entry-level TV guys have all sorts of technical stuff to worry about. But so do we. A lot of low-level print guys go back to the paper and lay out pages after they write. Or they take more scores on the phone. So they don’t have time to be feeding you information for your 11 p.m. show. Get it yourself. Just like we did. Now ending my rant …
10. Allen | July 10th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
Playing devil’s advocate…can he prove that KSAT stole the story? I mean, maybe they read about it there first, THEN made some follow up calls on their own to confirm the story. What’s the problem with that? I know for a fact that KSAT has strong ties to the Spurs organization…maybe they simply made calls and confirmed the story on their own?
Did KSAT claimed they broke the story?
11. Kent | July 10th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
Allen, that was my thought when I read the paper’s original story earlier today. How does this columnist know that KSAT stole the story? Maybe KSAT got a call from the Spurs during the sportscast and a producer said something in the anchor’s ear. Or maybe they read it on the AP during the show. Even if the AP had gotten the info from the paper, once the AP reports something it’s fair game. The paper might be right about getting ripped off–but they might not, and the column never cites any kind of proof.
12. Z | July 10th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
If I use AP, I attribute AP. If the AP mentions the local paper in the story, so will I.
13. Cory | July 10th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
There are two separate issues here. The first is running newspaper stories on the air. The second is running them online.
For me, if a story that we enterprised moves on the AP wire and shows up on a competing site across the street in a couple hours, I don’t give a hoot if they attribute it or not. Everyone who reads that story on that site is stealing a pageview away from me. They should LINK me, not copy-paste my story from the AP.
This is a severe problem that needs to be fixed.
A similar problem is emerging with the affiliate feed services. Why should I feed out a terrific video clip just to see it appear on CNN.com and score a 250,000 video views of which I don’t see a penny? Pretty soon, local affiliates will stop feeding great stuff out.
Stay tuned on all this.
14. Allen | July 10th, 2007 at 5:35 pm
Again…how does he know for sure they used his story? Did he call the station for the story ripping KSAT to ask them about it? Why weren’t they given the chance to defend themselves?
15. Joel Price | July 11th, 2007 at 12:06 am
From time to time we breaking news on our team site and we rarely if ever get credit from newspapers, TV or radio. We realize we are stepping on toes when we do this but we do make the effort to link to every article written about the team good or bad.
16. Chris | July 11th, 2007 at 5:25 am
The AP will instantly attribute stories and facts to newspapers, but rarely, if ever, to TV/Web properties.
We had this problem a few years ago where the AP was lifting copy directly off of our website without attribution. I complained to the AP, asking that they either give us credit or stop lifting our stories. And to their credit, they took action — they stopped running our stories.
I guess that’s how much it would have pained them to credit a TV station.
17. Been There, Done That | July 11th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
Kent and Allen: How does the newspaper know it was ripped off? Because the TV guys don’t cite a source of any kind. It’s just as easy for a TV guy to say “the team tells us” as it is to say “sources tell us.” That is, unless they didn’t talk to someone from the team. Phrases like “sources tell us” and “KSAT has learned” are nothing more than code for, “we ripped this off from somebody else.” The absence of attribution on the TV side is all the explanation you need.
If that doesn’t work for you, consider this: I worked as a print reporter for several years and as the managing editor of a TV station web site for several years. I’ve had the probably-not-unique pleasure of both having my work ripped off by TV hacks and witnessing TV hacks ripping off material from newspaper web sites and competing TV station web sites. Take it from me — it happens. Constantly. I’ve seen TV stations that would have to go to color bars if the local newspaper suddenly ceased operations.
Thievery is thievery, bottom line. But all too often, the problem on the TV side is a lack of adequate staffing. Most folks don’t want to steal stories. Most folks would rather have enough reporters to get all of the news on their own. That’s an explanation, but not an excuse.
One thing I’ve never been able to figure out: What is TV’s hang-up with citing the local newspaper as a source? Don’t the TV guys have much bigger problems to worry about? I can understand not wanting to cite a competing station as a source, but TV guy acts as if the viewer is going to turn off the TV if he says, “The Pleasantville Gazette is reporting…” Have you ever done that? Has anyone? At worst, a viewer might change the channel, but he’s not going to hoist his arse off the couch to find a newspaper, so why not cite the newspaper as the source? We work in the industry, so we’re hyper-aware of what comes out of a guy’s mouth on TV. But for the average story on the average day, the average viewer isn’t sitting on his couch and saying, “Ha. Those losers at the TV station got their asses handed to them by the newspaper again.”
18. Anonymous | July 11th, 2007 at 5:38 pm
that previous comment was the best one in quite awhile here.
if you guys ever find that remote, please award it to Been There, Done That as a memento.
19. Allen | July 11th, 2007 at 7:30 pm
Been there,
Did the newspaper list their sources for the story? What is wrong with saying “sources tell us” if it’s true and the source doesn’t want to be named. I’ve known that to happen quite often.
I’m not saying KSAT didn’t rip off the newspaper story, I’m just saying the newspaper guy should have some positive proof before slinging mud in the paper. It’s sounds to me like he’s had a problem with those guys and just doesn’t like them.
20. Aidian | July 11th, 2007 at 8:51 pm
If you confirm it yourself or the AP runs it, it’s legit to use. If you don’t like a competitor running with your story tell the ap not to pick it up. Is it a sometimes lazy shortcut used by understaffed tv news departments. You bet. But those are the rules as i understand them, and, until they change, live with them. That said, it sure sounds like KSAT ripped off the story.
21. Allen | July 11th, 2007 at 9:09 pm
I’m guessing the fact that the paper is a partner with KSAT’s competitor, KENS, has nothing to do with it either.
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