During the last year, I have been giving quite few interviews, "expert comments" etc to the Danish Media, and there probably is "positive circle of information" here, in that the more media refer to me, the more journalists I get contacted by. Normally, when I feel qualified to give an interview or donate a comment, I do it because I consider it my "duty" as researcher to make sure that my/our research is also communicated to a broader public - and because I find that it is important to make the broader public aware of the fact, that we do other stuff than programming at the "IT University", i.e. that we also do research in communication, games, aesthetics etc.

Most journalists do a good job, and really work hard at understanding a subject they dont necessarily know very much about and we maintain a good relationship. Almost everybody get back to me when I (based on previous bad experiences) as a rule ask them to let me see how they quote me, before they publish their piece of writing and understand that I reserve the right to change the quotes. So it is fortunately a very rare occurance, when I have an experience such as that of a few years back reading an article entirely based on info I fed a journalist, but in which Im wasnt given any credit at all. It happens once in a while that journalists talk to me, and I give them some pointers to interesting websites and my name doesnt get into the article, and that's ok, becuase these people normally make it explicitly that this is the way of things.

But I have NEVER before experienced that I suddenly appear in a newspaper article and is mentioned by name several times as an interviewee, without being informed about it in advance. Even worse that I only discover this because ITU's PR officer sends me the link to the article and takes it for granted that I know of it. At a closer look, the article in question , printed in Amagerbladet/Dragørbladet (a regional weekly newspaper) this week is verbatim the exact same article as appeared in the December/January issue of the ladies magazine IN which I was willingly interviewed for.

Well, it turns out that Maria on her own blog explicitly mentions the fact that she reuses the material, and the fact that she has checked she has the right to do this with the Danish Association of Journalists. The writer holds all copyrights to the article. OK - I accept that. Nevertheless, I think it is bad style not to mention the reuse of the article to the people involved, because since I am mentioned upfront in the article, it looks like I gave the interview to her for this paper, and that might principally have some repercussions for me (in principle, because it is a pretty harmless article, but we are talking general principles here..)

So what do I want to say with this? Basically, that disregarding this journalist's legal rights, I feel a bit abused, and that I wanted to let other researchers know, that it is apparently absolutely okay, that (update: freelance) journalists reuse articles in which you appear other places without giving you notice and without having to mention the first place of publication (unlike academic standards). It is perhaps legal, but not very ethical, IMHO, and a journalist acquaintance I have, confirms that. All I want is to be informed in advance and be given the chance to tell the journalist that of course it is okay (or, again, in principle, "no, I dont really think it is a good idea" even if I cant affect the outcome) - it cant be that troublesome to do that, can it?

Readers, what do you think? Am I overreacting here?

Update: Maria has given an apology in the comments. And it is actually Dragør-bladet, though the URL links to Amagerbladet. I'm sure she never meant to cause any annoyance, so read this post as a personal outburst more than anything else. Nevertheless I've been taught by this in the future to remember to remind freelance journalists please to inform me, if they reuse material, just as a general principle.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 23:40