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I’ve been pissed by shoddy journalism in mainstream media for quite some time now, with reports ranging from being grammatically incorrect to being outrageously wrong and untrue. But just when I thought this was the worst, I came across another ungly side of this multi-faceted devil that mainstream media is, when Priyanka (aka Twilight Fairy/TF in blogging/photography circles) recently appraised us about her being at the receiving end of it.

She mentions here how TOI (the self-proclaimed protector of India) “flicked” the pics from her flickr stream and put it on their “What’s Hot” supplement, WITHOUT her consent or even letting her know that they were doing this. Such an outrageous act from one of the leading newspapers of India, which is part of a giant world-wide media conglomerate. I remember that TOI regularly publishes articles about it being a front-runner in the fight against piracy/plagiarism. I guess all their editors/photographers/journalists subscribe to some other newspapers as they appear to be ignorant about the basic funda of what constitutes plagiarism.

What’s more is that TOI is not the only one doing it, most other print and broadcast media outlets do this, and hence you can expect them not to cover this story about a part of their “brotherhood”. So, what do we do now. I say, we should atleast do what we are best at doing. Raise our voice against it. Through our blogs, mails, word of mouth. Write about it, talk about it, digg and forward blogs/mails that write about it, bring to our notice other offenders in the mainstream media who do it. I hope that we can atleast garner so much support that someone has to think about twice before repeating such an act.
© Shantanu Goel | Plagiarism and Times Of India – Are They Synonyms?