An update to the Behemoth riding teenager story which I did that ran Aug 4 on CBC Radio across Canada.
Thanks to following the Twitter feeds of Tim Hill, the 12 year old who is riding Behemoth and posting his count online on CWMania, I discovered that he’d received a phone call from the producer of CFRB Radio’s Ryan Carroll show, and they scheduled an interview with him for this past Thursday about his feat.
Copying is the sincerest form of flattery…eh?
As a journalist, this should make me upset –it’s an enterprise journalism story which I worked hard on to break, and when another media outlet “steals” the same story for their own audience without doing any of the original work, it is often irritating for the originating reporter.
In this case, I am slightly annoyed but also pleased for Tim, because he deserves wide attention, and also for myself, that some other major media outlet heard the story, and agreed with me that it was a great story to pursue.
Two sides of the coin.
I’d be interested to hear what you readers think about this. Is it just an insider/industry professional courtesy ethical issue, or do non-journalists even care about which media outlet got the story first?
My initial reaction would most likely have been the same as yours. Although, I don't really think readers/viewers/listeners care about who broke a news story — so long as they receive all the info they need to lead their lives. But I think once you've shared a story like this & put it out into the universe, it becomes fair game for just about anyone to scoop it up and share it with their own followers. I feel that it's not quite stealing once you've put it out on a public platform because you've pretty much surrendered all claim you may have had over the story idea…unless of course, Tim offered you the exclusive. Totally unfair but such is the nature of the beast. Kudos to you for finding such an interesting story to tell in the first place 🙂
Why does a kid who rides a roller coaster a lot deserve wide attention? Who cares anyway?