Blogged

More on the AP vs. bloggers story

I was late to the story of the Associated Press “quote” attack on Rogers Cadenhead and his blog, The Drudge Retort, picking it up only upon reading the Saul Hansell piece in the New York Times this afternoon. That article spares but one short paragraph for Cadenhead to comment on having been targeted by the AP over excerpts quoted from AP stories, while allowing a great deal more space for the claims of the AP. Readers may be forgiven for perceiving an imbalance favoring old media in the Times piece.

An article by Simon Owens, publisher of the media/journalism website Bloggasm, provides a needed corrective. Owens interviewed Cadenhead, who acknowledged previous instances of full text copying of AP articles by users at his website. Cadenhead honored the AP’s request that these articles be taken down - but this event only represented the proverbial camel’s nose in the tent:

“One of the 14 takedowns at the time — it wasn’t full text,” Cadenhead explained. “It wasn’t even a significant amount of text…it was like two sentences with a link to it. At the time of the takedown I expressed my concern that we think this is fair use. This was a small amount of quoted text and it linked to an AP story. Commenters commented on it and were evaluating the article. That’s a fundamental aspect of blogging. That’s when they told me that they don’t think that’s fair use either.”

Anyone trying to piece together a more complete and even-handed view of the AP/bloggers story is well-advised to read the Owens article.

Readers will note that the Associated Press did not trouble itself to respond to questions emailed by Owens for this article. Owens remarks on this in a subsequent post, and I’d add that this underscores the hollowness of the standard old media screed that bloggers don’t do leg work or interview principals in a story. You know - like reporters.

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