Multimedia – let’s give credit where it is due

Yesterday I had a whinge about the BBC not giving credit to backpackdave08 for his video of Noel Gallagher being clattered on stage, which this morning had been seen by over 500,000 viewers.

I got home and read a post by Adam Tinworth who outlined another event when a national news organisation failed to attribute a source.

Been thinking about that overnight and decided to have a look at a couple of other online nationals to see how they handled the Gallagher YouTube video.

The Guardian embedded the video, and even better right from the start which I think makes it look better anyway. But there is no equivalent of a caption here – surely that is the least we could manage for someone who saw an event happening, captured it and shared it. There’s no obvious link to the original either – although if you watch the vid to the end you can do the usual YouTube thing of following the link.

The Telegraph used the BBC method of rip and embed in own player. They did, however, give a link through to the original. But to be honest, it wasn’t until I moused over it that I discovered what it actually was (have a look at the grab and see if you agree). This needs to be more obvious – tell us what the link does!

Again, pretty poor.

The Sun, bless ‘em, did the same – you can tell it’s Dave’s vid because someone says “whoa!” as Noel gets pushed over. It’s been ripped, cut and put in another player.

So, fail – in my view.

Sky News give us a link which says:

The security breach was caught on camera by a fan and has been posted on YouTube.

Does take us through to Dave’s page, but could have been a bit more elegantly done.

I hurled out a question to the Twittersphere about whether news organisations should quote the service or the creator and @bounder made a very good point – and I’ll quote him here:

Creator I would hope – otherwise it’ s like saying we were told about this from an 02 mobile

So come on nationals: if you take someone’s work and use it, then give them a credit, byline or at the very least a nice obvious link back to the original. They add value to your piece and depth to what would otherwise be a static text page.

Or am I not allowed to say that as Dave is a YouTube user and not a journalist? Ok, maybe we should all start thinking about putting Creative Commons licences on our stuff to make sure we get a fair go?

Call it an act of journalism or an act of sharing he’s done the deed, so surely he needs to get a bit of credit for it?

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September 9, 2008 | Filed Under video 

Comments

  • The Gromm
    I agree Craig, it is a mind-set that needs to change. It even goes for freelance journalists having staff reporter names slapped on their work.

    The stupid thing is it is so obvious, and I bet that more people have looked at backpackdave08's page than looked at any of the papers.

    My view is simple, if you do the work you should expect credit. Use a CC licence if you want paying, or probably even better attributing.

    I wonder if any of the organisations who ripped the video and put it in their own player have breached any laws? One for a Twitter question methinks.
  • So agree with you, but we are trying to break a mind-set that for years has seen newspapers gladly rip each other off and so crediting others is going to be quite a challenge for such organisations.

    It was only a couple of months ago that Shiny Media wrote about Panorama not acknowledging their writers:

    http://www.shinymedia.com/2008/06/bbc_screws_br...

    And last month The Guardian couldn't bring themselves to link to the Telegraph after Prince Charles spoke about GM crops:

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/au...
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