Got this message on an editor’s listserv last week and definitely could relate to this editor’s concerns:
We are a small (and I mean really small) newspaper in American Samoa always struggling with readership issues. Right now there is a big (to us) trial going on in Washington D.C. which is about 8,000 miles from here. The trial involves federal fraud and conspiracy charges brought against our Lt. Gov and a senator. We hired a writer who used to live here and now lives on the East Coast to cover it for us. In our small arena, this is costing us a big chunk of change so we offered to share costs and the story with the only other news media on island, a local radio station. They declined saying it was too pricey. And I’m sure you know what’s happening now; although attributing the story to us at the beginning, they are reading essentially the whole report on their newscasts.
We contacted them about this saying we think there’s an ethics problem here if not a legal one. Of course they say as long as they attribute the report to Samoa News they feel they are being perfectly ethical.
Maybe management at the newspaper is not looking at this in an unbiased manner, but we think their whole attitude stinks. Are we off base?
Well, I don’t think they’re off-base, because we’ve certainly experienced the same thing with radio stations in the Rogue Valley, maybe not with any one item that’s so costly, but on a regular basis that is aggravating to say the least. One local sports talk station that will go unnamed (since there is only one, you can figure it out) routinely reports the same news that we have in our sports section, including local stories that clearly have not been independently reported. They’ve promised to give us credit, in lieu of payment, but have by and large failed to do that.
So what’s the big deal, some may ask. It’s just information that’s commonly available. Well, the big deal is that it’s only commonly available if somebody reports on it — and in most cases that somebody is being paid. In our case, we pay reporters to gather the information so we can publish it and then a competitor, who has paid no one to do the same, takes our story, changes a few words (most times) and then broadcasts it.
It’s enough to make you want to call your lawyers. Hey, now there’s an idea.
