Plagiarism

Ouch - having your work go out under Hella Pick’s byline must have hurt! She was among a small group of diplomatic correspondents who accompanied then British Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe on a swing through the Gulf in 1988, which included a visit to the Armilla Patrol monitoring the Iran-Iraq shenanigans on board the warship HMS Sheffield. To her immortal embarrassment, and his clear enjoyment, Howe a day or so later showed her a fax from the FO of her Guardian piece bylined “Hella Pick, aboard HMS Belfast”, the notable tourist attraction firmly anchored in the Thames by Tower Bridge.

I also had the honour of having one of my stories taken wholesale and run under his own byline by the great Don Wise – from another country.

As a very green young correspondent in Hong Kong in 1969, I was allowed one night to accompany a British Army (the territory still a Crown Colony) patrol as it went about its business in the New Territories intercepting refugees fleeing the horrors of the Cultural Revolution in neighbouring China. It was good stuff as they floated in on makeshift rafts, swam over using reeds as snorkels to hide under the water and a myriad other ingenious ways to sneak in – nearly all of them ending in failure and roundup by the generally amiable and sympathetic squaddies.

A day or so later the Daily Mirror ran the story, which had been widely used regionally, virtually word for word under the byline of “Donald Wise, in Hong Kong” – despite the great man being firmly ensconced in Singapore at the time.

I was young enough and naive enough to ring up Don (whom I had met) and remonstrate. “But,” he expostulated, “it was a good story and, besides, it’s not that far away.” ■