Specifically, several posts on the blog appeared to be lifted verbatim from various news sources, including several mainstream media sites including CNN, MSNBC, ABC News and Oprah as well as larger blogs, such as WalletPop among others. None of the articles included attribution though some did have very brief introductions before the copied content.

Likely as a result of these allegations, the blog is down at this time though, if you act quick, you can find some of the content in the Google Cache.

The allegations seem to be about as cut and dry as possible, using the cached copies and performing a few simple Google searches, I was able to quickly and easily find about four or five examples of content lifted directly from other sites. Going back through the dates, I was able to find examples of copied works as far back as July, as far as the cached copies reached.

Here’s just one of the example Google results.

And another one.

Though the evidence is about as clear-cut as you can get, it seems unlikely to me that Tesh himself was performing the plagiarism. Almost certainly it was someone under his employ that was managing the blog. However, since it was his blog it is ultimately his responsibility.

Tesh has not commented on the allegations and his blog is simply down at this time, listed merely as being a broken link.

Interestingly, the only original articles I could find were cross-posts from the regular tesh.com site, indicating that the author of the articles on the main site was using authentic work that was being brought into the blog.

Hopefully Tesh will provide some insight as to what happened and how it was able to continue for as long as it did.

In the end, it seems unlikely that any of the entities the blog plagiarized from will sue, especially given the quick action to remove the content, but the potential for a lawsuit is going to make it so that Tesh isn’t likely to say much or shed any light on the incident unless forced.

All in all, it’s just another example of how a plagiarist, if unchecked, can create serious problems for his or her employer and why it is important to verify all works posted for authenticity.

Like most breaking news stories coverage of it was widespread and constant. However, this story was somewhat unique in that the first images and reports came not via the major news outlets or even regular blogs, but over Twitter and TwitPic.

Specifically, it was Janis Krumswho uploaded the first images. He was a passenger on a nearby ferry that responded to the downed plane and snapped photos of the incident as the boat raced to rescue passengers.

But as the story began to spread, it seemed that the fog of war began take over. Though it was well-known Krums was the photographer, it appeared at least once on MSNBC under a different attribution. This angered many supporters of citizen journalism and caused an uproar on Flickr.

However, it it appears that the mistake was an innocent one. Though it is unclear if MSNBC corrected the attribution on their site, they did perform at least one interview with Krums and identified him as the photographer on the air. It appears that the mis-attribution on the site was an accident.

Sadly though, during a crisis, mistakes are a part of journalism. Even the best sources get facts wrong, misspeak, are at times unclear and draw wrong conclusions. Though the better journalists and news organizations work to minimize these mistakes, they are inevitable.

Though we can take steps to mitigate and prevent such errors, they can not be completely avoided. To prevent these types of problems moving forward, it is going to take a concerted effort from a lot of different groups to ensure that citizen journalists always get their due.

Fixing the Problem

The problem itself is pretty straight forward. When a news organization is trying to cover a breaking story over television, radio and the Web, as many modern companies do, it is chaos trying to get all of the facts together. The main goal of the reporter is to find out the facts of the case and report on them. Obviously there is a strong importance of correctly citing sources, but it is more important to make sure that you have the facts right, especially when you are dealing with life and death situations.

If you’ve spent time in a news room, you know well how chaotic it can be. It is easy to see how attribution could be lost and, in the case of MSNBC, I feel certain that photo credit of “MSNBC TV” is just a default credit applied to all unattributed images.

Was it sloppy reporting? Yes. Should MSNBC have done better? Yes. But was it an honest mistake made in the midst of a very chaotic day? Yes.

Fixing this problem is not going to be easy and it is and it is going to come up repeatedly as mainstream media outlets lean more on user-generated content. Preventing these types of mistakes will require both media outlets making an even more concerted effort to attribute everything correctly and users making a stronger push to mark their work.

However, the technology is working against this. The most immediate means of getting such images out are largely personal and anonymous. Twitter and TwitPic, for example, can be traced back to a username but how much information that gleans is up to the user. Also, cell phone cameras typically do not embed the needed EXIF data to identify the photographer and most do not have the ability to set such information, unlike with traditional digital cameras.

It is entirely possible that a user could snap a photo of an important event, shoot it out over Twitter, be the first to report something and have no one know who they are. Though that wasn’t what happened in this case, Krums’ name was known and widely-reported on, these new technologies clearly add new challenges to mainstream media when it comes to identifying sources of information.

How citizen journalists and mainstream media overcome these challenges will remain to be seen, but it is clear from this story that there are at least a few snags in the line.

Best Steps

Right now, there isn’t a lot that can be done to prevent these kinds of incidents, at least not from the viewpoint of a potential citizen journalist.

That being said, I would definitely take the following steps if you think you might ever catch an image CNN could want:

1. If possible add your name and information to the EXIF data of your camera. Make sure it is embedded in every image.
2. Be sure that your name and contact information are on every site you post your work.
3. When uploading an image or video, provide all of the information that you can, including location, tags, etc.
4. Try not to submit a file to too many places at once. Doing so can cause confusion as to where the source and doesn’t appear to greatly speed up how fast it is seen.
5. If you see a mis-attribution, try to correct request a correction as soon as possible. The problem is that one mistake leads to a dozen as others pick up the story.

These are basic tips but they are also things that most would-be citizen journalists are not in the habit of doing. If you one gets in the habit now, then they will be prepared when and if something major does happen and they get that prized image or video.

Conclusions

The good news in all of this is that Krums does not seem to have suffered any ill effects from this mistake. The overwhelming majority of mentions have been correctly attributed and he is widely known as the photographer. He’s given interviews on MSNBC and NBC, both of which identify him as such and most of the mentions on the Web have included his name.

Despite the mistake, Krums is getting his due credit.

In the end, it is clear that MSNBC made an error. The company and its Web team should have done better. However, throwing around blame for an obvious accident doesn’t make any sense. There is a much bigger issue about how to properly attribute citizen media going forward. This is something outside of the normal mainstream journalism paradigm and the policies they have for tracking ownership and providing credit do not neatly apply in many cases.

Solving this issue is going to take an effort by citizen journalists, news organizations and even the hardware and communications companies that help people get news and information out.

We have tools that let us capture images and video from any news story and instantly beam it out to millions of people, however, we now need to make sure those tools come with the same protections that ensure such use is attributed correctly.

After all, if we don’t know who is behind a story, not only only do we not know who to thank for getting the news out there, but we don’t know if we can trust what is being reported.

Hat Tip: Melanie Phung

But as hot as the debate is among bloggers, it is even more heated in the mainstream media. With millions of dollars invested in content creation and a root that is still firmly in the print and broadcast world, the traditional purveyors of news have far more to weigh when creating their RSS strategies.

So what decisions have they made? How have they decided to use RSS to distribute their content across the Web? In this article I’m going to evaluate twelve of the biggest names in the mainstream media and how they use this new technology.

Preface

Before delving into the analysis, a few caveats.

First, the RSS feed count is NOT a total count of all the feeds available on a site, but rather, the approximate number of feeds the company actively promotes. Many sites offer feeds not actively promoted and some offer custom RSS services akin to Technorati. Those are not counted.

Second, there is a difference between a synopsis feed and a partial feed. A partial feed pulls its content from the article itself where a synopsis feed is a specially-written summary for the feed itself.

Keep that information in mind as you read the details below.

Wire Services

Number of Feeds: 13
Style: Partial
Length: Less than fifty words.
Using FeedBurner: No
Autodiscovery on Home Page: No
Notes: The AP doesn’t seem very interested in RSS. It promotes 12 feeds actively plus another “Featured Feed” on their RSS page. The RSS page also contains some very basic subscription help and a very strict TOS that blocks almost all reuse of content. To make matters worse, there is no feed connected with the home page of their site and you have to look closely to find the link to the other feeds. Though they offer feeds for every section of the site, it is clear that they are not a featured product.
RSS-Friendly Rating: 3

Number of Feeds: 43
Style: Partial
Length: One Paragraph
Using FeedBurner: Yes
Autodiscovery on Home Page: Yes
Notes: RSS clearly plays a much larger role on the Reuters site. Not only do they offer 43 feeds, but their “Top News” feed is available via autodiscovery on their home page. Also, their RSS page is clearly marked in the sidebar with both text and an the RSS icon. They also offer very clear subscription instructions, which are further supported via the FeedBurner pages, and a clear terms of service.
RSS-Friendly Rating: 6

Number of Feeds: 1 (English)
Style: Partial
Length: One Paragraph
Using FeedBurner: No
Autodiscovery on Home Page: Yes
Notes: RSS clearly isn’t a big deal to the world’s oldest news agency. It offers only one feed, which can be autodiscovered on their home page, and a concise terms of service for it on their RSS page. All in all, their RSS strategy seems to be a complete void.
RSS-Friendly Rating: 2

Number of Feeds: 18
Style: Partial
Length: One Paragraph
Using FeedBurner: No
Autodiscovery on Home Page: Yes
Notes: UPI’s RSS page is clean, concise and has a decent number of feeds. Unfortunately, their link link to a request form to use their feeds on your site seems to be broken, linking back to their home page.The page itself works fine though, even if it is devoid of any effective RSS information and only contains a handful of chicklets for guidance.
RSS-Friendly Rating: 4

Television

Number of Feeds: 28
Style: Headline/Partial
Length: One Paragraph
Using FeedBurner: No
Autodiscovery on Home Page: Yes
Notes: Finding CNN’s RSS page is no small feat. However, it is not worth the effort. Though it contains, a good number of feeds, some decent explanation of RSS and a robust, if perhaps overly thorough, terms of service, the feeds are a disappointment. They alternate between headline-only and partial feeds, making them very difficult to use, even in a vanilla RSS reader.
RSS-Friendly Rating: 4

Number of Feeds: 26
Style: Synopsis
Length: One Sentence
Using FeedBurner: No
Autodiscovery on Home Page: No
Notes: The BBC’s home page does not have an autodiscovery feed and the link to their RSS page is fairly buried. However, the content on the page is very good, including a decent number of feeds, a clear terms of service and instructions of making custom feeds. They also have prominent links to other services including mobile alerts, email newsletters and podcasts. Though I am not sure how I feel about the synopsis feeds, my biggest issue is that they do not promote their feeds more.
RSS-Friendly Rating: 6

Number of Feeds: 15
Style: Synopsis/Partial
Length: One Sentence
Using FeedBurner: Yes
Autodiscovery on Home Page: Yes
Notes: Fox News readers must not use RSS heavily. The Fox News RSS page seems to be hastily thrown together with a very heavy-handed license that, while allowing reuse of their feed, places a lengthy set of restrictions. The feeds themselves are strange. Some stories seem to use the first paragraph from the story itself, others seem to be a synopsis.
RSS-Friendly Rating: 4

Number of Feeds: 147
Style: Synopsis
Length: One Sentence
Using FeedBurner: No
Autodiscovery on Home Page: Yes
Notes: Visiting the MSNBC RSS page can be very overwhelming. The page is actually spread across four sub-pages and contains a whopping 147 feeds. Though the page has some very good information about how to use RSS, it is strangely devoid of any terms of use. The feeds themselves are unique in that they include images embedded in them. The text is, generally, a short one-sentence synopsis of the article though some seemed to pull from the opening paragraph.
RSS-Friendly Rating: 6

Newspapers

Number of Feeds: 68 (Plus 15 Podcasts)
Style: Synopsis/Partial
Length: One Sentence/Approx. 50 Words
Using FeedBurner: No
Autodiscovery on Home Page: Yes
Notes: The New York Times RSS page is a robust collection of RSS feeds framed by good information about RSS and a solid terms of service. The site even offers a tool to embed their headlines into your site. Their feeds alternate between providing a one-sentence synopsis for news articles and a 50-word partial feed for blog entries.
RSS-Friendly Rating: 7

Number of Feeds: 184
Style: Synopsis/Partial
Length: One Sentence/One Paragraph/Several Paragraphs
Using FeedBurner: No
Autodiscovery on Home Page: No
Notes: The Washington Post claims to have over 150 RSS feeds on their RSS page. but a quick count locates a total of at least 184. The page itself includes some great information about subscribing to RSS feeds but no information regarding a terms of use. The main feeds themselves are synopsis feeds and, on rare occasion, include images. Some of the smaller feeds are partial encompassing the first paragraph and some of the opinion feeds seem to encompass several paragraphs of the entry, though never the whole item.
RSS-Friendly Rating: 7

Number of Feeds: 123
Style: Partial
Length: One Paragraph
Using FeedBurner: No
Autodiscovery on Home Page: Yes
Notes: The London Times RSS page is a lengthy list of well over 100 feeds in a variety of categories. The page includes some basic information on how to subscribe to RSS feeds though a terms of use is strangely missing. The feeds themselves are pretty cut and dry partial feeds using the first paragraph of the original article, this is true in all cases. The system could stand some improvement, but is overall pretty solid for MSM.
RSS-Friendly Rating: 6

Number of Feeds: 25
Style: Synopsis
Length: One Sentence
Using FeedBurner: No
Autodiscovery on Home Page: Yes
Notes: It is hard to tell exactly how many RSS feeds The Guardian has. It doesn’t display all of its feeds on its RSS page and, instead, sprinkles most of them throughout the site. The number above only represents the number promoted on the above page. Their RSS page, however, does provide some very basic information on subscribing to a feed though there is no information about a terms of use. The feeds themselves are straightforward one-sentence synopsis feeds.
RSS-Friendly Rating: 6

Trends

When looking at the evidence above, several trends become evident.

Conclusions

There weren’t many surprises for me as I sought to compile this list. The fact that the mainstream media is being very stingy with what it puts into its RSS feeds should shock no one reading this.

However, it is clear on closer examination that at least most of these companies are actively courting RSS subscribers and some are doing it somewhat well. It is clear that these companies do have an RSS feed strategy and are executing it.

Though we often think of the mainstream media as being dinosaurs in the digital age, they do seem to be making very real, if imperfect, efforts to catch up. Even though I didn’t feel comfortable giving any of the sites above a “7″ for their RSS friendliness, the quality of effort was still higher than I expected.

Now, if we could just overcome this pesky use of partial feeds, we might have something that even the staunches RSS reader can enjoy.