Most people who write anything on the web complain that others who write, do not give credit where credit is due. So if you write something and I take your content without citing you or linking to you, that is not a good thing. But it happens all the time, with large and even small publications.
Over the years you live to just ignore it. A Wall Street Journal journalist calls you several times, spends probably hours on the phone with you, then writes up his or her article and gives you zero mention at all, let alone a link to your web site. Happens all the time...
Danny Sullivan from Google thinks we should do something about it. He said on Twitter "Journalists should be putting pressure on institutional barriers to make it easier to cite and link to original and supportive sources." He said this should be done "Because doing it is better journalism."
Google will do what it can to figure out the original source - they just released updates that aim to do this better. It isn't perfect but Google is working on making it better.
Here are Danny's tweets on this topic from yesterday:
I'd think of linking as just part of proper attribution. You're a journalist. You write a story, you cite your sources. If those sources are online with more info for the reader, that cite should link to them. That's just good journalism. It should be standard....
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) October 16, 2019
I think this has diminished over the years, but you still see it, especially for competitive breaking news. It's one of those things that make identifying original content so hard. But likely worse is simply copy desks/style guides/procedures....
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) October 16, 2019
It shouldn't be this hard. Journalists should be putting pressure on institutional barriers to make it easier to cite and link to original and supportive sources. Because doing it is better journalism.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) October 16, 2019
It makes you wonder if not only is Google working on crediting the original source more, which the company said they are doing and getting better at. But also if they might eventually take punitive action against sites that do not cite its sources. I mean, Google has more power than journalists to make a change here. So maybe Google should?
Forum discussion at Twitter.
