To get incredibly irritated by lazy journalists stealing MN threads

[ReaganSomerset]

There's been at least one more today, this time stolen by the Plymouth Herald (shame on you). It happens all the time to all manner of threads, from baby names through to relationships, pillaged by lazy journalists without a thought for the lives they could damage and people they could hurt because they can't be bothered to find their own stories. It really gets my goat.

yanbu ofcourse

Is there nothing that can be done about it? Isn't the thread the intellectual property of the original poster? Could a copyright notice be added to prevent this sort of thing occurring?

Post here and it becomes the property of mumsnet. Journos get around the copyright issue by not copying the whole thread.

I’ve noticed the same, so frustrating as I want to hear about actual news worthy items, it’s creepy and lazy journalism - if you can even call it that!

That's really interesting. Mumsnet says,
'This Web site and its contents are copyright Mumsnet, all rights reserved. Reproduction of all or any substantial part of the contents in any form is prohibited. No part of the site may be distributed or copied for any commercial purpose without express approval.'

Given that some articles directly quote large swathes of text, are these infringing copyright?

Sadly I dont think there is, what with it being a public forum.

Looks like the Plymouth Herald article has been taken down now

@noiamspartacus ooh, yes, it does. I wonder why?

I can't get worked up about this. It's a public forum and journalists can get material from wherever they want. The world's a vast place with a huge range of media and journalism has undergone a few changes since the days of trooping out to cover the local flower show or WI meeting.

I saw an article on yahoo news the other day with the thread about the woman who was annoyed her sister announced her pregnancy after she gave birth

i can't understand the surprise at this......Its been happing for years

It's been like this for ages.

It's a huge public talk forum not a cosy private website. If you don't want something to end up in the paper or as a piece on Loose Women/This Morning etc then best not to post it on here.

Why is it "lazy"? Where do you think harder working "stories" come from?

Which thread was is that was stolen?

What 1Redacted1 said.

Which thread was it that was stolen? Is it still around?

One of my threads got picked up by the Mail in 2007 (“on holiday with Victor Meldrew” about whinging husband on holiday).

I was pleased! I didn’t care about IP being nicked, or whatever. So what?

Sorry, 2017, not 2007

The Plymouth Herald once sat a journalist in the centre of town to live-report what was happening all day. The updates were literally things like ‘another deliveroo driver just went past’ and ‘that’s the second cardigan like that I’ve seen in the last hour’.

I was so embarrassed for the journalist. Still it must beat having to churn out yet another story about Katie Price or announcing the traffic situation on the A38 every five minutes...

Absolutely dire.

Public posts being publicly available. Whatever next?

I think it’s great. Bringing the topics and debates to a wider group of people!

I can bring you one that is lazier.

When dd1 had just been born there was an article about someone who had been badly treated by the NHS with to a similar disability to dd2. This was fairly widely publicised in Independent/Guardian/Times etc. NHS apologised fairly quickly and amended the situation.

When dd2 was about 10yo someone sent me a link to an article in either Mail or Express published that morning. My immediately reaction was puzzlement because it was the same thing as above, and I knew that in our specialists it had been totally resolved. So I went back to look at the original article.

Basically they'd rehashed the original article-same people same quotes, same photos etc.

Not just lazy journalism, but totally out of date information that could have caused stress to people who needed that NHS treatment.

Meh, journalists have a difficult job to do, more than ever in the digitalised world. People love reading this shit so it makes sense they’d want to publish it.

Mumsnet is a public forum with a lot of sway. There’s a lot of interesting debate on relevant topics and insight into people’s lives and circumstances that you wouldn’t usually be privy to - why wouldn’t a journalist be drawn to that? YABU