Comment on Sinosplice, Appear in China Daily
Recently China Daily used the comments of my Reel Geezers on Lust, Caution post as material for an “article” called Do Westerners get Lust, Caution?
What fine journalism.
Perhaps I should add a warning to my comments section… Warning: anything you write here may appear in China Daily.
Outrageous. I have never been understood why readers should have to pay for China Daily (or any other Mainland newspaper). We should be paid to read them.
I think that foreigners just don’t understand China Daily.
I think we should make a comment thread devoted to plagiarism in China and see if it is picked up by China Daily.
Personally, I think the article ended on a high note, with a final quote that really showed a lot of wit and deep understanding.
Sorry John, I’m going to stop reading your blog from now on and just wait for the abridged version to come out in the China Daily.
I don’t see anything wrong with this. If they choose to republish comments without editing, then SMASH THE STATE that’s their right. Journalists here KILL THE RICH are overworked anyway, the poor things — all of that muck-raking and hard-hitting investigative journalism FLUSH THE TOILET, FOR CHRIST’S SAKE they’re always doing must just tucker them out. Give ’em a break.
Not to take anything away from this site, but I think journalism has reached a pathetic state when a newspaper article is derived solely off of a blog article, or any other secondary source for that matter. I generally think China Daily puts together a pretty decent paper considering the fact it is an English newspaper, published in a non-English speaking country, but this is really lame. In other news, is there some way we could get English Chinese media outlets to stop using that damn word “netizen?”
John,
Same thing happened to me last year. Different paper, but they spliced together parts of two posts plus some comments.
I think of it as “lazy flattery.”
Damn! My plot to get Radley Metzger and Gregory Dark free Chinese press has failed! The horror! Perhaps I’m too “violent,” and, too “yellow!”
😉
At least they spelled your name and URL right. View it as a free ad for your site.
Maybe some struggling writer had a deadline to meet and a family to feed so he/she came up with that article after pondering the ethics of doing so. Or maybe some lazy writer wanted to get in their daily story and take the rest of the day off.
If the writer thinks the topic is worth covering and wants a”man on the street” article, I think it’s a lot easier to read a conversation about it online, rather than trying to interview people.
Also, give China Daily credit. Had it been the NYTimes, the writer would have invented fictitious people and had them say exactly the same things.
Or The Washington Post … makes me think of William Raspberry’s taxi driver. Come to think of it, a lot of stories about China quote taxi drivers too, don’t they?
It’s okay. Your understanding is very good… for a foreigner.
Eh oh, won’t the journalist need the permission of interviewees in real lifes? Should be the same in internet. It’s peremptory, not nice.
Personally, I don’t understand Lust, Caution either although I’m native.
Does plagerism mean anything in China or is that a copyright thing? Oh, that’s right. It’s China. So neither really matter
The more, the merrier. Even if it’s using your content with your permission – but at least, with credit!
I work at City Weekend, and I regularly see our articles and reviews published in full on China Daily with no credit to their source whatsoever.
Guys, don’t get carried away here. It’s up to you to judge the journalistic quality of this piece, but it’s certainly not plagiarism, not in China and not elsewhere, and neither does it brake any copyrights. We published something on the web and it’s every journalist’s right to quote us and report on it.
I’d write something on plagiarism but it’s easier to just look it up, really.
John, I didn’t know you were secretly writing for China Daily now.
: )
Just to be clear, I don’t really mind the use of my content (since it was cited), and I don’t consider it plagiarism at all. I just feel a little embarrassed for the China Daily.
The term “netizen” is commonly used in Korea by locals and foreigners alike. It is an appropriate term, for Korean internet users are a species unto themselves. Likewise, most of the anonymous commenters spewing racist and xenophobic trope at Japan’s 2ch are probably mild-mannered, polite people in the public space,
I can see why the journo didn’t put their name on the piece. Mostly it seems like lazy writing and likely was someone on deadline who didn’t have to worry about an edfitor coming after them about quality.