What’s the similarity between these 7 Telegraph sports journalists?
- Oliver Clive (44 articles since November 2007, most recent on 30th June)
- Austin Peters (109 articles since October 2007, most recent on 18th May)
- Charles Carrick (169 articles since October 2007, most recent on 1st July)
- Matthew Hannah (14 articles since September 2008, most recent on 30th June)
- William Gray (180 articles since October 2007, most recent on 28th June)
- Perry Crooke (60 articles since October 2007, most recent on 16th June)
- Dan Harbles (35 articles since November 2008, most recent on 30th June)
Well, according to Private Eye, they don’t exist. They’re made up. Invented. Plucked from the imagination of someone in the Telegraph’s London HQ.
When I first read this allegation in Private Eye I admit, in my naïve way, I was unconvinced. I’m aware that news organisations have, for a very long time, published articles that bear a remarkable similiarity to agency copy with a byline from one of their own journalists. But inventing non-existent journalists is a step on from this. Would the Telegraph, the newspaper that was so – rightly – aghast at the improprieties of MPs create fictional correspondents? Wouldn’t that be potentially pretty embarrassing? And anyway, given they’ve got such a good repertoire of sports journalists in house, what would be the motivation?
The new Journalisted site has a terribly helpful ‘similar articles’ feature, which finds stories that cover similar subjects. This is great for contextualising an article, for seeing alternative reviews (e.g. of books or films) and for checking facts.
But it also has another use. It makes it much easier to see when someone has simply republished copy from a news agency or a press release.
This is what I did with the allegedly non-existent Telegraph journalists. I looked up their profiles on Journalisted, checked their articles, and found that many of them bore a remarkable similarity to articles in other newspapers that were either not bylined or credited to agencies.
“Porto left-back Aly Cissokho is set to make a decision on his future at the end of the season after claiming Tottenham are interested in him.”
“Porto left-back Aly Cissokho is set to make a decision on his future at the end of the season after claiming Tottenham are interested in him.”
Slapping a made-up journalist’s name on news agency copy is one thing, but it gets worse. And this is where there is a material difference from what is, I’m told, an age old practice of bylining agency copy. Someone appears to have gone through the copy and edited out references to other news organisations.
The same football article in the Express, for example, quoted Cissokho: ‘"I have a contract until 2012 and the club officials want me to add another year to that," he told skysports.com.’ Yet in the Telegraph the reference to skysports.com was removed. Later in the article a separate quote, attributed to mountakhab.net was also removed from the Telegraph’s piece (accessed 2-7-09).
So, not only is the paper inventing bylines, but someone appears to be going through the agency copy and excising reference to competitors.
To check this wasn’t an unfortunate recent graduate called Oliver Clive being told to churn out agency copy I called the Telegraph and asked to speak to Clive. He could not be found. I emailed him at oliver.clive@telegraph.co.uk. No answer. Nor has there yet been any response from the other six ‘correspondents’ (if there is I’ll update this blog and make that apparent).
I’ve since managed to track down someone at the Telegraph. He did not deny the Private Eye story but said he thought it was hypocritical of a magazine that uses many pseudonyms and that it ignored the fact that this is 'standard industry practice'. It was not, he suggested, a big deal - and was done more than anything for 'design reasons', because it looked odd to have an article without a byline (though the majority of BBC news online articles are published without bylines, and lots of the Express online is not bylined).
Even if one accepts that, in an age of print, this was a common and recognised inside practice, does that make it justified? And, in the age of blogging, linking, transparency, and of the importance of cementing the brand of your journalists? Isn’t it time it stopped?
Posts
20 comments:
Standard industry practice? Not convinced. It's not practice anywhere I've ever worked.
When working shifts at The Guardian / Guardian.co.ukI very occasionally had to write a story based on agency copy (with the Politkovkaya case in Moscow for example) but putting in context and so on, so it was substantially different to the original. The resulting byline was 'Caitlin Fitzsimmons and agencies'.
Many papers publish wire copy directly crediting the name of the agency that supplied it. They did this on The Australian, where I worked for four years, and I've seen it in print elsewhere as well.
Hmmm. Surprised at cod names? That is very naive from someone who appears to lecture on industry practice.
Cod names are an industry norm, not only used on agency copy, but also on copy from stringers who may file for more than one paper. And they have even been known to have been used at The Guardian, Caitlin, so don't go all holier-than-thou on this one, please.
The point of the original Private Eye story was that the Telegraph was now using agency copy for its cricket coverage, instead of its regular freelancers, and seeking to cover up the practice by using cod names.
I would not worry about using cod names if the journalism at the heart of the whole thing was not just crap: the homogenisation of coverage by simple re-branding of agency copy, and the dreadfully poor editing (such as the example highlighted by Grauniad's Meeja Monkey this week, describing Andy Murray as "English", for goodness sake).
Sadly, while the Telegraph is guilty as charged in all respects, it is not alone.
"Standard industry practice? Not convinced. It's not practice anywhere I've ever worked."
It *is*, I'm afraid.
Especially in the locals.
This has been going on since time immoral, and in these new days of transparency hands up any journo who has never made up a letter for the readers' Letters Page.
My favourite was back in the days of the Daily Herald before it morphed into the old broadsheet Sun (and then became Murdoch's soaraway tabloid Sun).
The letter I invented on the Stone to hurriedly fill a gap in the sports postbag column allegedly came - much to the amusement of the comps - from Ivor Smallun, Cockfosters.
Juvenile but fun. Happy days
Heard the one about the radio stations who invent song request callers and competition entrants?
In my local newspaper days (Stratford Express circa 1957) we used the house name A. Hunter or Allan Hunter for bylines on stories once staff reporters had used their maximum two bylines.
I also appeared as my granddad Tom Sims, and my uncle Ted Clark.
And on the Daily Herald the Linotype setters used to have competitions coming up with new versions of my name. I appeared in the paper as Norma Giller, Noman Giller, Norman Iller, Roman Giller, Moron Giller, and best of all, Normal Giller.
Yes, happy days. Now I am plain old Norman Giller, of Whom Who's Who says Who?
If you have never played the name game during your newspaper career, you've not lived dangerously.
Not wanting to get all Jeff Jarvis but why not 'do what you do best and link to the rest'? The Telegraph has a great reputation for sports journalism and a long history of it so why make up non-existent journalists and excise references to competitors? If it's to suggest it's original journalism that would just seem to detract from the actual original journalism in the paper and on the site
Completely missed the point.
The Torygraph had a good rep for sports writers.
They're trying to cover up the fact they've lost, fired, retired most of them by bylining agency copy. I'm not saying freelance or agency copy isn't as good but the Torygraph are trying to fool their readers into believing they still have named writers.
They are doing this across the board.
It took me a month to convince them to pay me for an exclusive from Zimbabwe and when they were finally forced to agree the copy was mine, they held off paying until I was forced to chase them again weeks later.
It is standard operating procedure at every paper. Welcome to the humiliating world of professional writing.
They'll take your stuff, use it, deny it and refuse to pay for it. Who cares who's name is on it?
As a very wise man once told me, the only byline I care about it the one on the cheques.
In the interests of transparency will the Daily Telegraph now publish the expense accounts of these 'journalists'?
There's a world of difference, as any fule no, between obvious pseudonyms as they appear in the Eye (e.g., “Dr B. Ching”, who writes the railways column), and made-up but plausible names.
In the former case, it's a clear case of protecting the identity of the author (for example, “M.D.” is known to be a real doctor, so his ability to both practice and write the column could well be in jeopardy if his real name was too widely known); in the latter, it's just a case of making it look like somebody on staff who actually exists wrote the column when they didn't.
RIP Nigel Dempster. He was William Hickey when I worked with him on the Express, and how many aliases did he use in Private Eye?
But now this topic is more about fiddling freelances out of their rightful fees. As a freelance since tunnelling my way out of the Express in 1974, I am steaming for you Uncle Barry.
The Telegraph journalist's response is pretty specious.
Pseudo-/anonymity amongst Private Eye correspondents is about protecting sources, encouraging whistleblowing, and allowing people to contribute without fear of reprisals from employers and other interests to which they are beholden.
At the Telegraph, it's about lying to readers and covering up the fact that they are no longer willing to pay for orignial journalism.
There is a very simple solution to this: PA, Reuters and all the other agencies supply reporters' names on every story. So why not - as The Independent does - use the agencies' bylines instead?
On the 'it's for design' argument, that's also an excuse some papers newspapers make when they slap an "exclusive' box below a reporter's byline -- makes the page look nicer, even if the story in question isn't particularly exlusive
What about snappers? `Errol Day' springs to mind. 'Ere all day? Geddit?
You're missing the point slightly when you complain the Telegraph has removed references to other media.
It is standard practice for newspapers to report what someone said without giving details about where and to whom they said it. Look at any story and you'll find probably find "he said", not "he said on the BBC's World at One", "she said in a press release", "he said in on the phone to our reporter".
Just because something is in PA copy doesn't mean it should necessarily appear in a newspaper. PA copy is provided to its subscribers - newspapers and broadcast media - to use as they wish. They're under no obligation to copy PA's style when using PA copy.
The real point here is the one Steven made.
I'll spell it for you. Money.
The Torygraph does this to fool readers into believing they still have a stable of named sportswriters. That's all.
Removing references to other news organisations is standard. It's nothing new and there's nothing behind it.
So, Private Eye runs a four- or five-par piss-take of the Torygraph's use of bylines of reporters who don't exist (from the comments already posted, it looks like we've all rumbled the rationale).
Several weeks later, Martin Moore blogs the same story, with a plug for his website and a dash of shocked self-righteousness.
And then the following week, Press Gazette - the new, slimmed down, online version - effectively reports Byline Story v3.0.
Churnalism, or the business that ate itself?
Gadzooks! What next? Perhaps someone will copy paste and then stick an invented byline at the top of it?
@ London Echo, et al "It is standard practice for newspapers to report what someone said without giving details about where and to whom they said it. You're missing the point slightly when you complain the Telegraph has removed references to other media."
Confidentiality issues aside, but maybe it's time this wasn't 'standard practice' anymore. Surely technology can now allow us better referencing of sources, i.e. "transparency". As opposed to just just helping corporates/advertising with their data compiling.
How many different ways do you want to hear this? It's about the economy, stupid. This has nothing to do with standards. Whose idea do you think it was?
This is about keeping up the ABC figures and maintaining ad rates by fooling the readership into believing you still invest in reporting.
It has nothing to do with reporters, reporting or standards.
Post a Comment