Topic: WorldNetDaily
Plagiarism isn't enough for WorldNetDaily, it seems -- now it's apparently decided to take credit for stories it didn't write.
A Jan. 5 article on the WND website touts how a new Bible translation "has had its verses on homosexuality reworded, making them clearer in denouncing the practice," and carries the byline of WND news editor Felicia Dionisio.
One might attribute this to a production error due to unfamiliarity with WND's new website layout, but WND has a long history of appropriating the work of others for its own purposes. Even without Dionisio's unearned byline, this article is one of many on the WND site in which WND has simply copied the first couple of paragraphs to its own website -- occasionally offering credit to the author -- then linked to the full story on the originating website.
WND is presumably doing this without properly compensating the original owners of the work -- after all, WND subscribes to no wire service. WND probably considers this to be covered under fair-use laws, but WND is a for-profit business and, as it likes to remind us, "a leading Internet newssite in both traffic and influence," so there's no good reason it can't pay for what appears on its website.
The headline links that appeared on the old WND site are one thing, but actually cutting-and-pasting parts of articles created by others without compensation so they can drive traffic to WND is something else entirely.
WND is, quite simply, trying to profit off the work of others without paying for it. That's stealing. But then, given how casual WND has become about plagiarism these days, that's not surprising.
P.S. In the bio attached to her byline, Dionisio states that she "considers her tenure as a news editor at WND a life-changing experience. The truth has a way of doing that." That's an ironic invocation of "truth" in an article in which she lies about its creation.
