Mariah Carey: How Our Story Got Stolen By Everyone
Look back two days in this column and you’ll see a story about Mariah Carey. She told me was “naive” about performing for Muammar Ghaddafi’s son on New Year’s Eve 2008 in St. Bart’s. I reported exclusively that Mariah was donating all the money from a new song called “Save the Day” to human rights charities. She might even start a foundation–might. What happened next? Other websites–the ones Google said it was getting rid for simply repurposing the news–just lifted the whole thing. Many claimed Carey had sent them a statement directly. However, they all used my verbiage about Ghaddafi–“vicious, crazy.” The Hollywood Reporter just helped itself to it 24 hours later almost verbatim. Some outlets said they got their story from a statement on Carey’s website. None of them acknowledged that Carey’s webmaster had just reprinted my story–with credit. But this is how the internet works. And it doesn’t seem like the new Google algorithm worked very well weeding all these sites out. And PS, to the idiots who decided Carey was returning money she made in 2008: she ain’t. That’s some fiction you created on your own.
Roger, you should name names! It’s disgusting when other websites don’t give credit to the other sites they “borrow” things from. I wouldn’t want to patronize them if you’d tell us who they are!
You forgot Perez. He’s the biggest cut & paste blogger of them all. And what’s so hard for them to repeat the story but provide a link back to source? Isnt that what people were taught in elementary library class??
NEXT.
I notice the copying occuring all the time. Yahoo doesn’t seem to have an algorithm either. Media heads need to look at the problem because obviously they are paying their people to write news and those people obviously aren’t doing their job and should be terminated.
Take it as a compliment Roger because they know you are accurate, dependable and have the contacts. They should man-up and give you the credit though. The reputable media businesses will credit their source.
I don’t think the Google algorithm changes actually had anything to do with the “News” side of the search engine website. Only “Web”.