Chatting with my best friend last night about my misadventures with the Huffington Post made me realize how little the general public knows about the practices of the media companies they patronize, with their clicks if not their money.
My friend is a dentist and has no link to journalism other than her friendship to me and the little media consumption her busy medical career allows. She, like most of the general public if my friends are any indication, had no idea that the stories she may read on HuffPo or other sites are often stolen in whole or largely copied from other works, with no permission from or retribution to the original authors. And she, like most people with whom I shared my experience, was scandalized when she found out.
It’s not that they’re uncaring or thoughtless. It’s frankly that most have never asked themselves the question. What matters to most readers is what’s being said in the story, not how it got to their screen. Just like you don’t think about where dental prosthesis are manufactured… until you’re best friend with a dentist.
So with that in mind, after writing an angry message to the Huffington Post asking them to give credit to writers by name and pay them market freelance rates or remove the story (I haven’t got a response, no surprise there), I turned to the readers. I posted the following comment to the story that was largely plagiarized from my work. And, to HuffPo’s credit, it was approved and published.
No reaction from readers, and I don’t expect any as the story is a few days old now. But it felt good to say. The sad part though is that fighting this fight takes far too much time and energy, for freelancers whose time definitely is money. So most don’t do it, as I likely won’t for future stories. And thus they win…
