And other Scottish media outlets as you'll see.
On 26 June - 2 days after I posted the final UEFA pots, STV Sport came up with this fine piece of journalism:
Scotland fall into pot four for 2014 World Cup draw
I wrote them asking them nicely to include the source. Here's what Mr. Robert Dawson Scott replied:
"Our story was compiled without reference to your site which, until your e-mail, we had never heard of. The information and coefficients are available to anyone to work out."
I then asked them to explain why they have Wales in pot 6 and Faroe Islands in pot 5 - just to show me they really did compute the rankings themselves. As you guessed, there were no further replies from the talented Mr. Scott.
My traffic stats tell me I've been getting a lot of visits from Glasgow, through the "Stv Plc" internet service provider. I also have a STV journalist following me on Twitter. I find it really hard to believe Mr. Scott's claims.
That's something Scottish media keep on doing lately. The Scotsman and Daily Record constantly use data from my blog and then don't reply to my e-mails when I write them about this issue. What's sad (for me) is that a journalist from the Daily Record actually asked me for information regarding Scotland's ranking and then the Daily Record published articles about this very subject but forgot to mention the source.
Pffft. Don't let it get to you. These scum are all out for themselves. They want all the credit for themselves. After all if they exposed where they were getting the info from, people would come to you, and that's people not reading their stories and not looking at/clicking on their ads. That mentality will come back on them though if they ever want some specific info again on say permutations regarding Scotland and seeds and results of other teams, which I'm sure you'd have granted if they were crediting you, or maybe even just acknowledging that they got the info from you in return e-mails, without actually crediting you in their articles.
ReplyDeleteThe way Scotland is in self-destruction mode affected their Journalism as well...
ReplyDeleteI am resident in the UK and have noticed this, the BBC website is guilty also (although they may be taking their info from the Daily Record). Bert Kassies' UEFA Club Coefficients website is similarly plagiarised. I know of no other place that publishes data like your & his sites, and doubt very much that there's someone sat in the offices of the Record mirroring your work!
ReplyDeleteThis is really how "journalism" works today; everyone is sitting in their offices and rewriting stuff they find on the internet.
ReplyDeleteHere I've seen papers blatantly translating local newspapers' articles and claiming them as their own. You can't do much more than put them on a wall of shame.
Oh, don't worry - I just wanted to let you know what happened. I was annoyed, but life goes on.
ReplyDeleteThanks!