News Corp and Daily Mail reopen hostilities over story ‘theft’ with legal letters
News Corp Australia has sent a cease and desist legal letter to the publishers of Daily Mail Australia demanding they take down a story about a young boy’s death after a ‘slapping therapy’ workshop.
The move comes despite the two publishers reaching a confidential settlement in September over a similar dispute, in which both sides accused each other of lifting exclusive stories for their websites.
The Australian quotes Daily Telegraph editor Paul Whittaker as saying: “The Daily Mail’s so-called reporters don’t have any dramas finding stories — the problem is they are all from the Telegraph’s website. Even by their appalling standards, these are brazen copy thefts. They had already earned a reputation as copy-snatching magpies, but now they’ve evolved into an even worse breed of vultures, who feast exclusively on the hard work of real journalists.”
The Daily Mail has released its own statement accusing the Daily Telegraph of repeatedly ripping off its own exclusives and pictures, and failing to link back prominently to their original stories.
The Daily Telegraph exclusive
In its legal letter News Corp accuses the Mail of copying nearly word-for-word the first six paragraphs of last Thursday’s exclusive story, posting it to its website two hours after it went live on The Daily Telegraph’s site.
The Australian quotes the letter as saying: “A reference to The Daily Telegraph in the second sentence is not enough to obviate the impact of your client’s unauthorised taking of the original material.”
In a statement The Daily Mail said it was “committed to telling the stories of the day that matter to Australians” adding this “includes breaking news, original reporting and following up on the important stories of the day (in online publishing this is known as aggregation)”.
“The story which is the subject of the Daily Telegraph’s complaint was followed up by most other news websites. In line with online news best practice, Daily Mail Australia provided two hyperlinks to the Daily Telegraph’s story. However in good faith we have made subsequent edits to the story while our legal advisers review the complaint.”
It went on to accuse News Corp’s titles of “continuously” failing to link back to the Daily Mail’s website, citing a number of examples, including one of “exclusive” photographs of the Bali Nine smugglers Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan, which it says were “stolen” by three News Corp websites.
“It is troubling that News Corp continues to cry theft when their stories are followed up with proper attribution by Daily Mail Australia. It’s time that their journalists and editors provide proper attribution and hyperlink to the original source when they are lifting stories from their more successful competitors,” added the statement.
News Corp declined to comment further on the legal letter.
Alex Hayes
topics
Daily Mail
News Corp accusing others of theft? pot meet kette.
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They both just steal their stories from Reddit and Twitter anyhow.
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Who in NewsCorp makes the decision to shoot themselves in the foot time after time? I’d like to thank them though as it’s so amusing!!!
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There both fighting it out for the same trashy mantel, hence the similar statements.
May they destroy each other in the process
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‘they’re’
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Wow, Paul Whittaker must really be feeling the pressure from Daily Mail Australia. The Mail has beaten them on so many stories in their own backyard this year. Telegraph got completely smashed by Mail’s coverage of Bali Nine
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When did the Tele start hiring ‘real journalists’? I think it just riles them that the Daily Mail has significantly more online readers than the Tele.
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Here’s a +1 to What-the for this: …..”Who in NewsCorp makes the decision to shoot themselves in the foot time after time? I’d like to thank them though as it’s so amusing!!!”
And second +1 to The Facts for: ….”When did the Tele start hiring ‘real journalists’? I think it just riles them that the Daily Mail has significantly more online readers than the Tele.”
Yep. Newscorpse. How the cadaver stinks!
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This made me laugh out loud. So Boris accuses the Mail of ripping off one yarn and then it is revealed that his paper has allegedly ripped off four yarns. Hahahahaha. Onya Boris!
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^ Boris also blatantly ripped off the Mail’s right rail in the Tele’s last website redesign. Reeks of desperation.
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So Rupert Murdoch:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Murdoch
Verses
Jonathan Harmsworth:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.....Rothermere
Both of their long term agenda’s involves fooling the stupid and appealing to the greedy top screw over the majority of the world’s population.
Can we just stop giving these people money already please?
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to*
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It’s a sad fact for many “content producers” (as distinguished from actual journalists) that their rather sad life these days involves writing totally shite and worthless copies of already existing articles on other publications and then adding “According to …” or “As told to the …” at the end.
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