It wasn't just this time!

It happened again and again.

Recently, I uncovered a news service that is taking every post on the blog Iraq Today and posting on A Pakistan News. Now, I have no idea who is doing this – or why – and no idea why they would not link back to the original. I do know it takes a lot of work to put together blog posts like the ones I do on Iraq Today, and it angers me that someone would steal the work and not credit it.

Recently, I found the same phenomenon via an email. A women named Shirin sometimes comments on Iraq Today (and Today in Iraq before that) but she seldom links to articles and has never put together a blog post. But, she sends emails to some folks that contain her interpretation of an article and then the article. And she consistently fails to acknowledge where the article came from or how she found it. She did - ONE TIME - make a mention of the blog Today in Iraq in her emails, after I pointed out that she had never done so.

She sent out this note in an email on 3/26/08:

“By dumb luck I chanced on this blog post from 2005 recounting two live broadcasts by Peter Jennings during the American "shock and awe" of Baghdad. Jennings, clearly expecting to speak to joyful, newly-liberated Iraqis, was treated to something far, far more realistic.”

She then proceeded in posting an entire blog post in her email, without a link. That blog post is here.

So, how did she find this three year old blog post? Was it really “dumb luck”? Well, a couple of days before, I posted this on Iraq Today blog:

From Glenn Greenwald’s blog:

After I posted this Charlie Rose segment yesterday, Wired's Ryan Singel emailed me about this amazing ABC News broadcast that he transcribed from the night in March, 2003 when we began dropping our loving, liberating Freedom Bombs on Baghdad. Jennings' entire broadcast that night -- as was true for virtually every establishment press outlet -- was dedicated to the storyline that we were marching into Iraq to depose the Evil Dictator, Saddam Hussein, to rid him of his wicked weapons and finally free the Iraqi People and give them Freedom and Democracy. Freedom was on the march -- and still is. But on ABC that night, something disrupted the script. In the frenzy of the evening, ABC producers were desperately trying to get Iraqis to go on the air and say how grateful they were for our Freedom Bombs, but a couple of them ending up saying the opposite -- quite angrily -- just as the two Iraqi interviewees disrupted Charlie Rose's script.

As you can see, I got it from Glenn Greenwald’s blog, and there is a link in there to the blog post of Ryan Singel. That blog post of Ryan Singel was put into Shirin’s email in it’s entirety. It is possible that Shirin also reads Glenn Greenwald’s blog – but, in her email, she neither credits Glenn nor me – she claims she found the three year old post by “dumb luck”. She did not include a link to Ryan Singel’s blog either.

This has happened repeatedly. I wrote this in the comment section of Iraq Today on 3/29/08:

hey, Shirin, I put in almost 4 hours of work on this post. Now, you go ahead and cut and paste it to email and pretend you did the research without any attribution to me or Iraq Today.

She responded with this:

Susan, I am sorry that I occasionally find the same things you do, most likely from the same sources, and send them out without crediting Today in Iraq. Would it satisfy you if, before I send something out to my little list, I scanned TIA to see if you have posted it, and give you credit for also having found it? I am not being facetious. I would love to find a way to do what I do without offending you or making you feel slighted.

As I have said repeatedly, I have nothing but respect and awe for the depth and breadth of this site, and the work you and Whisker, and Cervantes do in keeping it up day after day after day. It is easily the best source for daily information on Iraq. And this is the last I will say about it. We simply do not have time for this kind of personal animosity.

So, is she being honest here? Did she really find a three year old blog post “by dumb luck”? Or is she benefiting from other people’s work and failing to acknowledge that?

I sent her this email note (in response to her original email) prior to the posting of the comment on the blog:

I don't think it was "dumb luck" - I posted it on Iraq Today on Wednesday. And I didn't find it by "dumb luck" either - it was part of my hours-per-day research for the blog Iraq Today. And Glenn Greenwald didn't find it by "dumb luck" either - someone saved it and emailed it to him, as part of his critique of corporate media reports on the Iraq war.

I would think you could at least point out, and link to, where you got the information from, instead of passing it off as your own work or "dumb luck". Really, is stumbling on Iraq Today a stroke of "dumb luck" after you have been reading for years?

She never answered that.

Well, today, April 7, 2007, I posted this about A Pakistan News on Iraq Today blog:

A Pakistan News

[They copy our posts and reprint them on their site without saying where they came from originally. Some people have no morals or ethics. – dancewater]

I then posted a comment in the comments section, and unfortunately did not save it….. but it had to do with people using other people’s work without giving credit to the source of the work. It also mentioned that Shirin only mentioned our blog one time in her emails, after I had pestered her.

And one of my fellow bloggers decided to delete that comment and put this up:

Now that you two have had a chance to communicate, I've decided the rest of the world doesn't need to see this. - Edited By Siteowner

I do not know who did this (whisker or cervantes), but I know one thing – they have no right to censor what I want to say. I will not post on Iraq Today for the rest of this week. Hey, I might decide to stop all together. It is a lot of work, and depressing work at that. And I get really annoyed at people who use other’s work without crediting it, and annoyed at those who think they can decide what other people can or cannot say.

And, I would have no idea of what Shirin says in her mass emailings, if she was smart enough to take me off her list – like I requested. And this is just the latest example of her emailing efforts – she has been doing this for years!

UPDATE: Turns out it was cervantes who deleted it, and he thinks it is not censorship but “doing what is best for the blog” (how very paternalistic of him!!) because he does not want to see a squabble between me and “valuable commenter” Shirin. Maybe Shirin will find enough “dumb luck” to put together a post for Iraq Today. Don’t hold your breath!