Bad attribution, British style

Par for the course, the Brit media irritated me throughout our UK trip. My favourite example was on the Banksy unmasked exclusive in the dreaded Mail on Sunday. For those who don't know, his art capers include a 2005 grand tour of NYC where he surreptiously hung his own works on the walls at the Met, MoMA, the American Museum of Natural History and Brooklyn Museum -- where they stayed unnoticed for several days.

But the exclusive left the competition in a pinch. The Telegraph picked up the story with poor attribution. Best I can tell, they did no extra reporting for their own 14-graf story, even lifted Mail on Sunday quotes without noting they were from the other paper. (I would prefer something like: "XYZ" he told the Mail on Sunday.)

The lede in the Telegraph identifies the source as "a Sunday newspaper investigation." And then finally, the sixth graf:

But a trail of evidence uncovered by the Mail on Sunday suggests that the truth about his identity may finally have been unearthed.

Unsure if the Telegraph linked to the Mail on Sunday as that page has expired and I can only see the Google cache now. But you can guess I'm betting they did not link to their competition.

Labels: media

- posted by Amy @ 7/22/2008 07:35:00 PM