Stop the steal (journalism version)

ILLUSTRATION BY HENNING

A University of Alabama football fan went viral when national TV showed him wearing a crimson t-shirt amid a vast Penn State whiteout during the Nittany Lions’ home game against Auburn in September 2021. It was a story begging to be told. So Ryan Phillips did.

The editor of the local news website Patch Tuscaloosa tracked the man down. It wasn’t easy. But he got the story. Less than 24 hours later, a journalist at an Alabama TV station “pretty much stole my entire story without giving credit,” Phillips said.

Laura Testino knows similar frustration. When she reported for the education website  Chalkbeat Tennessee, she chased down a high-profile scoop in November 2023 about Memphis educators limiting what the authors of a Pulitzer-winning biography on George Floyd could say about systemic racism to students at a predominantly Black local high school. A national media organization later reported on the controversy.

“My story was only credited for the apparent one comment this (national) reporter could not solicit on her own. I (and Chalkbeat) didn’t receive credit for first reporting the story, even though the entire report rehashed all of the sources and information I had originally compiled,” said Testino, now a reporter for the Daily Memphian.

Journalistic larceny is actually legal if it falls within the subjective guidelines of “fair use.” The harder question is what represents ethical vs. unethical use of another news organization’s good work. It’s a relevant question, too, because with today’s smaller newsrooms, the need to constantly post new content online, and yes, some occasional laziness, re-use of the work of others is common.

There are different kinds of re-use. Taking published stuff – even if it’s just pieces – with no credit to the original outlet and no link to the original story is reprehensible. “While legally you may end up in jail for grand theft auto but not for grand theft news story, there’s no difference between the two ethically,” said my UA journalism department colleague Dr. Chris Roberts, who is also director of the Office of Research in Media Integrity. “It’s wrong to take something that you didn’t pay for without permission.”

The examples above, however, are not that. In many cases, Outlet A discovers a story done by Outlet B and decides to do its own reporting, which probably includes talking to some of the same sources that Outlet B used. What’s Outlet A’s obligation in that case?

“This has been a real problem for generations, as we know that most national news stories about local things come from local sources,” Roberts wrote in an email. “If you’re re-reporting a story you first found elsewhere, a ‘this was originally reported by’ sentence seems appropriate.”

from a re-reported washington post story in july. readers might not care, but sentences like the last one, which included a link, fulfill an ethical obligation.

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That does happen. Roberts pointed out that the Washington Post, for instance, has staff writers who re-report stories published elsewhere, and they do cite the original publication. Based on my reading over the years, I think sports journalists generally have adopted the practice of crediting whoever got a scoop first, even if they’ve confirmed the scoop on their own. “It’s just the classy thing to do,” Roberts said.

Phillips said bigger organizations have taken a story idea from his site without giving credit in their version several times. “They got more traffic, it felt cheap and just left me feeling like my work didn’t matter.”

I see journalists – not just pros but student journalists, too – express similar irritation on social media with some regularity, and it’s really not pointless bellyaching. Credit and linking matter. They are a reward for good, hard-working and usually local writers who don’t get a lot of morale lifts in this business. More significantly, though, wider acknowledgement boosts the reputation of the originating writer and their organization, which in turn means more readership and a greater likelihood that a source with a great story tip down the road is going to pick them to tell it to.

 “It should be obvious to anyone observing journalism right now that we should all be pushing toward credit and collaboration, rather than brute competition,” Testino said. “Our industry is too short on original reporting, compared to aggregation or commentary, to not be doing this.”