MTV may be an old hand in the music news industry, but according to recent complaints, the Goliath is now using smaller online news sites to pad its own reporting. Two leading online music news sites have complained to MTV that MTV News has been stealing their stories and repurposing them without proper attribution.
"We're not trying to tame an 800-pound gorilla," says Robert Lord, executive producer of allstar, a prominent online music news magazine funded by N2K. "We just want credit where credit is due."
In a letter of complaint dated 24 February, allstar accused MTV of repurposing at least three of its breaking news stories, using direct quotes or slightly rewording lines of text without citing their publication. Lord said allstar now believes that "tens" of stories may have been used.
"We've had a mixed experience so far with MTV," says Michael Goldberg, editor and publisher of Addicted to Noise, the largest and oldest music news site, also mentioned in the letter. "We've had several things that they've given us credit for onscreen and online. But we've also had several instances where they haven't credited us."
MTV admits that "it's possible that something could have fallen through the cracks," spokeswoman Caroline Mockridge says. The site has recently revamped its news coverage, making it more immediate, and "we still need to work out a few kinks," Mockridge says. MTV would not say how it would react to allstar's letter.
But "kinks" might be an understatement. Addicted to Noise has seen quotes from its exclusive interviews show up on MTV News - as recently as 20 February, when an originally reported Addicted to Noise story about Garbage showed up on the MTV News site. When an angry Goldberg spoke to officials at MTV, they claimed it was an oversight and promised that all stories would be attributed in the future.
MTV will "continue to be extremely vigilant that sources are attributed in online news," Mockridge says.
