In what appears to be a story mistakenly published to the general public, PWInsider has issued a stern warning to its subscribers.
Before the “LIKELY TNA EXIT” story by Mike Johnson, a note to readers at the top reads:
“Your PWInsiderElite.com account is meant for your own personal use and is not to be shared with any other person. The information contained on the Elite site is our exclusive, proprietary information and content. It is not allowed to be reposted or transcribed on other sites, social media platforms or message boards. Any violation of these terms will result in your account being suspended and any money you paid to us be forfeited. We need to do this to protect the health of our site. Thanks for understanding and for your support of PWInsiderElite.com.”
The aggressive, heavy-handed language used, especially the wording, “The information contained on the Elite site is our exclusive, proprietary information and content. It is not allowed to be reposted or transcribed on other sites, social media platforms or message boards,” raises journalistic questions about where a publication’s right to protect its exclusive reporting ends and its ability to restrict the sharing of newsworthy facts begins.
The issue is fairly simple from a journalistic and legal point of view.
While copyright protects original written content it does not grant ownership over the underlying facts being reported.
Reproducing another site’s article word for word can infringe copyright but the facts themselves — the raw news — cannot be copyrighted. Other outlets, subscribers, can report those facts in their own words as long as they don’t reprint or republish the original article.
In other words, PWInsider doesn’t own the news, they only own their content.
In J-School, suggested guidelines of professional conduct and mutual respect are laid down, a lot.
Once news, facts have been reported, are in the wild so to speak, they aren’t owned by anyone.
It is a fact that in game four of the World Series that the Tampa Bay Rays won by a score of 4 – 3 over the Milwaukee Brewers. Nobody owns that raw information. Anyone can talk about it, anyone can write about it.
When it is reported that CM Punk has signed a new contract with WWE, that is the same. Anyone can talk about it, anyone can write about it.
Now, if you are truly professional you include attribution for stories that are more than just simple facts like the result of a baseball game or a wrestling card. You credit the source that broke the story, did the original interview, etc, to give them the credit they deserve.
Here in Toronto, that was a sore spot when it came to local radio stations reporting the news for quite some time. Radio stations were notorious for taking important stories from newspapers, rewriting them, not crediting the sources and reading that news on the air. Not cool.
What is lost these days is there is a difference between reporting the news and breaking the news because there are so many news sites, YouTube channels of every genre that don’t actually do any work themselves. They don’t interview anyone. They don’t have any sources. They don’t do any of the groundwork.
They are news aggregators not news sources. That is an important distinction. Attribution acknowledges the time and work that went into reporting the news which can include developing sources, experience and knowledge.
A simple box score or list of wrestling results which are publicly observable facts are different from an interview or detailed news story and this is why attribution is important in those cases.
While I cannot address whether someone’s account can be suspended or terminated for just disseminating facts elsewhere in their own words as I don’t have PWInsider’s exact terms and conditions in front of me, what is undoubtedly true is that no organization owns the actual news they report. Not Slam. Not The Wrestling Observer. Not PWInsider.
While we are on the topic of news and journalism, please stop with the:
If you use any of the quotes above, please credit the original source with an H/T and link back to Fightful for the transcription.
That’s not how journalism works, folks.
Asking for attribution for transcribed quotes is absurd. The interview’s original source should always be credited and cited but transcribing what someone said is exactly that, a transcription. It is not reporting on any level. Transcribing an interview does not make the transcriber the original reporter.
Listening or watching someone else’s interview and writing the quotes up is NOT a noteworthy journalistic achievement that deserves any kind of recognition or attribution and people would know that if they had any kind of journalistic education, experience or were mentored by someone who has.
So, readers of PWInsider, be free! The shackles are off! You are free to discuss the news, share the facts and talk about what’s happening in wrestling.
Just don’t republish someone else’s work.
Always remember and never forget this line of a dialogue though from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
Banky: I just wanted you to know that I respect your work as an artist. I’m something of an artist myself. I was the inker on the comic book.
Chaka: Yo, man. You are a tracer, okay? Nobody else got the heart to tell you. You trace. You go around the lines. You are a tracer, okay? Do you think Fat Albert had a tracer? No, Bill Cosby did the whole thing with a roller and it was EXCELLENT.
