Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

buzzfeednews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 417 posts

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#51

Post by NotChina »

headmelted wrote: post #26
jaywalk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they can silently change stuff without the ability for someone to go back and look at what it used to say.

Honestly I can almost imagine a way to arrive at this conclusion without it being shifty (although no idea what the case actually is here). If you're going to debunk an article about something like a lack of vaccine safety and need to retract a couple of sentences later, but the overall conclusion is the same, then the conspiracists will be right on you with a diff of the changes from the archive trying to piece toge…

Putting the concern of those who may misinterpret the changes above the goal of the truth, is also known as deception. Encyclopedias stand the test of time with addendums, to facilitate corrections. Removing the transparency merely allows for cyclical references in the news.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#52

Post by DFHippie »

jjcon wrote: post #33
DFHippie wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take it these weren't press releases. They were articles published by other journalists under a byline. When you issue a press release, you have particular information you want other journalists to pick up and spread. Attribution doesn't matter to you. If you are a journalist, you want to be credited. This is your bread and butter. Whoever is plagiarizing you is stealing your work.

And what about AP and Reuters?

I was only addressing press releases. I don't know about wire services. It's my understanding that publishing them as your own, or implicitly your own because of a lack of attribution, is just plagiarism.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#53

Post by danso »

jjcon wrote: post #33
DFHippie wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take it these weren't press releases. They were articles published by other journalists under a byline. When you issue a press release, you have particular information you want other journalists to pick up and spread. Attribution doesn't matter to you. If you are a journalist, you want to be credited. This is your bread and butter. Whoever is plagiarizing you is stealing your work.

And what about AP and Reuters?

AP and Reuters are wire services, and other news orgs pay a large fee to syndicate their content

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#54

Post by SllX »

headmelted wrote: post #26
jaywalk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they can silently change stuff without the ability for someone to go back and look at what it used to say.

Honestly I can almost imagine a way to arrive at this conclusion without it being shifty (although no idea what the case actually is here). If you're going to debunk an article about something like a lack of vaccine safety and need to retract a couple of sentences later, but the overall conclusion is the same, then the conspiracists will be right on you with a diff of the changes from the archive trying to piece toge…

You can print a retraction if you need to. Nothing wrong with fessing up and saying “we made a mistake, here’s the correction”, and reputable newspapers/news sites do this as a matter of course. Conspiracy nuts are going to do their own thing no matter what you do or say and if they’re determined enough, will have their own record, so you can only act in good faith for people who are willing to look at you and receive what you say in good faith.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#55

Post by weimerica »

jaywalk wrote: post #47
weimerica wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then one can update to provide a prominent note of clarification, rather than rewriting history. This deprives conspiracists of the ability to go "See, they rewrite history" while providing the full story, warts and all.

That's 100% standard practice for any reputable news organization.

Sadly, many an erstwhile reputable organization have devolved to engage in this practice.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#56

Post by rvz »

underseacables wrote: post #2

Snopes lost credibility when they teamed up with Facebook

And any 'news' outlet that has cited Snopes was also probably spreading questionable information.

But very unsurprising to see this from the already biased 'fact checkers'.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#57

Post by [deleted] »

jjcon wrote: post #15

Can someone explain what the difference between this and pulling stuff off the AP machine is? I see almost identical news articles all the time across major news outlets. My partner used to work at a company and would write all their news, spotlights and press releases. They commonly would see paragraphs taken by major news outlets without attribution. She tells me that’s just how it was. I’m not in the industry but…

[deleted]

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#58

Post by corndoge »

headmelted wrote: post #26
jaywalk wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they can silently change stuff without the ability for someone to go back and look at what it used to say.

Honestly I can almost imagine a way to arrive at this conclusion without it being shifty (although no idea what the case actually is here). If you're going to debunk an article about something like a lack of vaccine safety and need to retract a couple of sentences later, but the overall conclusion is the same, then the conspiracists will be right on you with a diff of the changes from the archive trying to piece toge…

That is a good thing. I want to see those changes.

Preventing people from seeing the change log of a page because "conspiracy theorists might use it" is dangerous thinking. Saying that it's okay to forego transparency because it could be used to bolster people who disagree with you is backwards. That's precisely why transparency should be retained - when you're the person disagreeing, it benefits you.

Re: Co-founder of Snopes was writing plagiarized articles under a fake name

#60

Post by jethro_tell »

jjcon wrote: post #33
DFHippie wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take it these weren't press releases. They were articles published by other journalists under a byline. When you issue a press release, you have particular information you want other journalists to pick up and spread. Attribution doesn't matter to you. If you are a journalist, you want to be credited. This is your bread and butter. Whoever is plagiarizing you is stealing your work.

And what about AP and Reuters?

Back when we had small town journalism, you'd get AP or Reuters as a service to be your world/national news department. The service was that they would give you a whole news department and you could copy paste the article and have your tiny news room writing about the basketball win and the bake sale.

That was the deal, but it's a subscription service for one. Secondly, the AP or Reuters got the by line in your paper. Third, you don't change the article in any way. You don't use a piece of it, and ad you own comments. you paste the article on the page with an appropriate byline

Post reply on HN