29 July 2013

Parasite journalism: is aggregation as bad as plagiarism?

   When a writer lifts thoughts - or even paragraphs - from an existing
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   When a writer lifts thoughts - or even paragraphs - from an existing
   work, we call it plagiarism. But news organisations do the same, and
   call it aggregation.
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   any better. In my opinion, it happens all the time, it's just that
   people don't get caught very often. Johann Hari is the classic example
   - the only absolutely rock solid piece of plagiarism that could be
   pinned on him was a piece from a German newspaper article that he'd
   translated.
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   copy of being free.

   In my opinion, some of this stuff is just as bad as plagiarism.
   Aggregators are parasites, only slightly more benign than plagiarists -
   and sooner or later, parasites kill the host. Someone has to actually