Is this unethical?

I suppose it is a gray area. If it was asked and answered loud enough for others to overhear in a public setting, I say it's fair game.

To me, what we're talking about is information that is delivered in public vs. info that is delivered in private, either in person or by phone or email.

If info is public, I don't think it needs to be attributed.

 

Exactly, if it's loud enough to be picked by the ear without "bugging" mics, then it's fair game to use. I really don't see any issue here.

 

Except, as a matter of personal choice, I wouldn't use the exact same anecdote, written in pretty much the exact same construction, of a piece that appeared elsewhere two weeks earlier.

Plenty of time to come up with another lead.

 

As a professional pride thing, I can certainly understand that.

 

I always dislike the use of "a reporter" when you're actually writing about yourself. That third-person approach can make a one-on-one scene seem like at least three people were involved.

 

What if the writer from the second story WAS "a reporter" from the first one?

The only questionable elements from the second story were "Buttfucker laughed" as a separate graf and the use of "he replied" in the money quote. Picayune, perhaps, but it could circumstantially point to a cut-and-paste job. And it's not that hard to reconstruct, anyways:

Podunk High grad Archie Buttfucker, a senior forward at Podunk University, laughed when asked near the end of a recent press conference whether stiches under his right eye came from a practice encounter with Joe Schmoe.

"Just caught a good old-fashioned Joe Schmoe elbow," Buttfucker said."

Something like that. Only, y'know, GOOD.

Or you could exise it completely. It's not that interesting an anecdote.

However, an expose on just how the Buttfuckers managed to create a child might be called for ...

 

I didn't read that part, that does appear pretty bad in the timing and construction of the second piece — though there's a remote chance of coincidence since the writing is basically in chronological order. On the subject of exclusive/not exclusive though, I had no problem with its use.

 

The question I haven't seen asked yet: Was the reporter from the second story AT that "media gathering"? If he was, fine, although the construction still looks suspicious. If he wasn't, damn straight he lifted it from the student paper.

Still doesn't rise to the level of, say, cutting and pasting someone's blog entry to your sports front. (No, the original story isn't mine, although the paper in question did the same thing to me in January. In both cases, entire passages, not just quotes from a one-on-one, were reprinted without attribution.)

 

Just to clear some things up:

The reporter who wrote the second story definitely was not at the media gathering.

Buttfucker was addressing about four or five reporters, but as they dispersed, only two of them heard the bit about the scar, and the only other report of it was just a very small blog note that said Joe Schmoe elbowed Buttfucker in the face. There were more quotes, from Buttfucker, that were given in a 1-on-1 setting after everyone left that were used in the second story, as well.

Also, the reporter who wrote the story is from the same area as Buttfucker, and has freelanced for the second Daily in question. So it's not at all a stretch to think that a reporter from that paper would be reading his work.

The thing that really stood out to me is the use of the word "inquired" and "Buttfucker laughed." There just doesn't seem as if there's any way that can be a coincidence, especially because, like I said, nobody else wrote this in an actual story.

 

Bobby Jindal says no.

 

The quotes in those national notebooks are from interviews in group settings.

If this was truly a one-on-one interview, which the original post claims, then it is plagiarism.

 

You would think stealing quotes and using them unattributed in this day and age wouldn't occur but it happens way too often.

Quotes I got in 1-on-1 situations covering a pro team would occasionally show up in stories and it would always be disappointing. What is so hard about attributing a quote that wasn't said to you? What's even more disappointing is that many of the quote stealers are big names in our industry.

On the college level, the Sports Xchange was notorious for stealing quotes without attribution. Some of those team correspondents owe me some cash for all the quotes that were pilfered from me.

I once tried to put "said during a face-to-face interview" into a story to protect some good 1-on-1 quotes and the person editing it called me to ask what I thought I was doing. The funny part of that person telling me something was unacceptable is that he didn't just steal quotes from other newspapers, he would occasionally make them up.