The Mercury, IOL quotes MarkLives, forgets to credit us
The Mercury and IOL finally caught up with the bloggers and the tweeps. It has run a story on its front page about the letter those ridiculous lawyers of FIFA sent budget airline Kulula.com.
Colleen Dardagan writes that “the airline broke the news on Twitter yesterday, saying: ‘Oh dear, letter from Fifa’s lawyers says we broke their trademark of the use of ‘South Africa’ and think our non-WC ad was about soccer … even the use of our national flag was an issue. It is absolutely outrageous. We have signed over our country, its symbols and our economy to one Sepp Blatter. Nasty.”
Well Kulula didn’t break the news on Twitter yesterday. It broke the news on Twitter on March 12th.
It only tweeted “oh dear letter from FIFA’s lawyers says we broke their trademark of the use of ‘South Africa’ and think our non-WC ad was about soccer…” as per the original MarkLives.com story. The rest was lifted straight from our editorial without credit.
PS: Howdy Business Report. Shout out to Newstoday.co.za. Hi News24 guys. Good folks at The Star
Update 10:40 am: IOL updates their story. Thanks @juanitaw
Update 15:36: “I said it, Mr Blatter, not Kulula.“
Thanks to Herman Manson for pointing this out. I’ve investgated and both IOL and The Mercury have corrected the attribution online and we will do so for the record in our print edition on Monday. However, in case the wrong impression wa created — The Mercury front page story was indeed sourced and the facts checked. The reporter in question called Kulula’s marketing manager Nadine Damon, who confirmed that the airline broke the news on Twitter. Damon is quoted in the article. The reporter went further and got comment from a Fifa spokesman. She erred, by conflating the original Kulula tweet with the one on @marklives. We are red-faced, but prepared to admit our mistake … perhaps Sepp Blatter and Fifa will do the same and stop being so precious about ambush marketing. In the end, ofcourse, Kulula wins hands down given all the free publicity. Which makes me wonder — it was probably all part of the bigger plan ala the Nandos’ strategy. Well done all. We need a bit of humour in our lives.
Hi Angela – I was impressed at the speed with which IOL corrected the mistake after I first tweeted about it. Hats off to you guys. I still think stories edited after publication need to be flagged as such. It clears up issues around accountability and transparency for readers.
We all know our newsrooms are understaffed and under resourced. Mistakes do creep in and it is only an issue if it goes uncorrected. SAPA compounded the issue with its story – one that lifted quite substantially from your own content.
If anybody should be red-faced it should be Sepp Blatter, FIFA and their gang of lawyers. Civil society should not be held ransom by IP lawyers. Kulula is big enough to look after themselves – it is our informal traders and SMEs we should really be worried about.