On giving credit where it is due

The newspaper’s readers’ editor, Chris Elliott, said in his weekly “Open door” column: “The Guardian supports the principle of fair attribution and regularly runs stories under agency bylines. Any failure to attribute appropriately is serious. The Guardian failed to give the appropriate credit to Reuters in a byline on a story reporting on the agency’s own scoop. There is no one individual at fault, but collectively the Guardian got it wrong.”

He said The Guardian’s operational guidelines should be reviewed in light of its new editorial code, a view accepted by management. Naming Reuters would have been fairer. “When the guidelines have been reviewed we may make further changes.”

Elliott said that news agencies’ contribution was once rarely acknowledged, their journalists resigned to seeing their work under another’s byline because the nature of the contracts was for services paid for by the newspaper. This allowed largely unlimited use of their copy.

“That situation has changed. In an era of fierce competition to sustain copyright, and rights in general, the agencies are quick to ensure their journalists’ work is properly attributed to the individual reporter and the agency.”

The review arises from a Reuters exclusive on 9 October about Cisco Systems ending a seven-year partnership with ZTE Corp, a major Chinese telecommunications company, after an internal investigation into allegations that ZTE had broken US sanctions by selling Cisco equipment to Iran. This followed an investigation by Reuters reporter Steve Stecklow, who first revealed the sale of the Cisco equipment in stories in March and April.

Elliott wrote in his column: “Later the same day the Guardian followed up the story, which was also in the FT. Charles Arthur, a Guardian reporter, spotted the story. He said: ‘I took Reuters copy, and then second-sourced it as far as I could – spoke to Cisco and spoke at least once, possibly twice, to ZTE and obtained quotations from them about whether they would resell Cisco gear, plus a fresh quote about how they would cover this.’

“Within the text of his story Arthur twice credited Reuters with the original scoop. He bylined the story ‘Charles Arthur and agencies’ but in the editing process the ‘and agencies’ was removed by mistake. The Guardian’s error was compounded by the story being billed as Arthur’s own on Twitter, because the Twitterfeed automatically pulls in any story with his byline.

“The complaint of a US technical journalist that the failure to credit Reuters constituted plagiarism was passed to the readers’ editor on Wednesday, and on Thursday morning Thomson Reuters contacted the Guardian to complain of the failure to correctly attribute the agency.

“I have spoken to all those who were involved in writing and editing the story, which was published online only. I don’t believe there was a deliberate intention to pass off the story as being solely by Charles Arthur. There is a set of operational guidelines for the use of wire stories based on the contracts we have for the use of material provided by the agencies. Here are those for Reuters: ‘We can use unlimited amounts of Reuters newswire, either verbatim, on ticker or subsumed into our copy. For verbatim usage, credit ‘Reuters’; for substantial Reuters usage, credit ‘Staff and agencies’; otherwise, credit ‘As reported by Reuters …’ at the beginning of relevant paragraph/sentence.’

“Even though ‘and agencies’ was added to the byline, the original was wrong as the guidelines state that substantial usage requires ‘staff and agencies’ as the byline. However that is inconsistent with the Guardian’s editorial code, which postdates the operational guidelines, and states: ‘Bylines should be carried only on material that is substantially the work of the bylined journalist. If an article contains a significant amount of agency copy then the agency should be credited.’ ■