Sunday Indo ‘journalist’ plagiarises Irish blogger
I did a quick poll of my male friends.
What do you lot think about the women you meet on a night out? I asked.
Drunk, was the resounding answer, drunk and easy.
Fatmammycat, Sept 13th 2006
I conducted a quick poll among my male friends. “What do you think about the women you meet on a night out?” I asked. “Drunk,” was the resounding answer. “Drunk and easy.”
Andrea Byrne, Sunday Independent April 8th 2007 (link requires registration)
I love the way ‘real’ journalists love to dismiss blogs as the inane ramblings of amateurs and wannabes but that doesn’t stop them ripping off their work.
Read the two pieces and the comments to see the bigger picture. It’s fairly obvious that Andrea Byrne has used the original piece, sometimes word for word, and passed it off as her own work.
The taxi driver who isn’t a prude – could it be that both Fatmammycat and Andrea Byrne both got the same cabbie and had the same conversation? Could it be that Andrea Byrne’s friends happened to answer the exact same question Fatmammycat asked 6 months ago in the same resounding fashion?
What do you think?
April 8th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
Most Sindo writers are banned from having an original thought, never mind writing an original piece. It’s in their contract. Something to do with pre-merger harmonisation of work practices, I believe.
April 8th, 2007 at 9:55 pm
Followed by …
FMC: Are we? Is that the perceived opinion of women?
AB: Are we? Is that the perceived opinion of Irish women, even among our own?
And more elsewhere.
Too much of a coincidence. FMC has a cast-iron case should she wish to sue.
April 8th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
mmmhh thats dreadful. And blatant. Its mad they think no one will notice. It seriously is.
April 8th, 2007 at 11:56 pm
20,
You’ve missed the other option. You just outed FMC as Andrea…you cunt.
April 8th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
It’s a nice theory but it’s not true, Soupy.
April 9th, 2007 at 1:23 am
As Freddie Laker said to Richard Branson regarding BA’s tactics before he was setting up Virgin Atlantic:
“Sue the bastards!”
Yeah I just finished reading Branson’s book…
April 9th, 2007 at 4:45 am
That’s quite extraordinary. I’d love to hear Ms Byrne explain this.
April 9th, 2007 at 7:51 am
Or maybe Fatmammycat is Andrea Byrne, and we’ve been her test group?!
April 9th, 2007 at 8:41 am
Thanks for pointing out another reason for me to continue ignoring the Sindo.
April 9th, 2007 at 8:47 am
It looks like a 50:50 splice of FMC’s article and some stats from the Polish Information Centre in Dublin. Disgraceful.
April 9th, 2007 at 9:56 am
Respect on the freaky photographic memory, remembering a piece from 6 months ago.
April 9th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
Fucking wankers, I think. That’s my FMC they’re pulling the bloggy goodness from. I’MA KILL THEM, I’MA KILL THEM ALL!!!
April 9th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Sue the Sunday Indo – that’s a nice thought. Never going to happen though is it. Every week they print the lowest form of journalism, snipe at those who go against their grain and get away with it. Best thing FMC can do is alert a rival paper (if she can find one that’s not under the thumb of tax-dodger Tony O’Reilly…rules out the Herald, Tribune, all the Indos, most of the regional press and the Star!). That’s the only justice you can get against these people.
April 9th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
[...] hack caught cogging Jump to Comments Twenty Major has hauled Andrea Byrne of the Sindo (reg. req.) over the coals for some pretty clearcut [...]
April 9th, 2007 at 2:09 pm
Bah, and she didn’t even buy me a drink first.
April 9th, 2007 at 3:14 pm
I would expect nothing better from the Sindo.
April 9th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
In fairness, that “journo” should be shot, or at the very least sacked from the sindo. What a joker! Jesus, that type of shit makes me so angry
April 9th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
It seems that somebody got caught with their drawers down and you shoved something up her ass.
April 9th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
Why do we (and I fess up to the occasional scab scratching look) read that rag?
April 9th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
Sunday Independent accused of plagiarism
An article (reg reqd) in yesterday’s Sunday Independent includes word-for-word sections and other similarities to an Irish blog post at fatmammycat.blogspot.com. The striking likeness was discovered by anonymous Irish blogger Twenty Major. “Read th…
April 9th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
Irish journalism has sunk to new lows….this must be exposed…I’m so mad right now. How did she think she could get away with this??
April 9th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
The Sindo is barely fit for wrapping chips.
April 9th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
Said it before but I’ll say it again, the Sindo is a nepotistic, bullying, kiss-up, kick down shitbag excuse for journalism. Sorry ’bout the language, but no gutter words are strong enough to describe the philosphy it subscribes to.
I haven’t bought it in 12 years+ (a very deliberate choice then) but anytime I chance to peruse it, it still has the same quotient of PR driven hackery, O’Reilly approved Kiss-Ass colour pieces and Weasel Word riven “investigative” pieces.
Eilis O’Hanlon, Emer O’Kelly, bullshit uninformed mouthy cunt-bags the lot of them. ARRRRGH!!
April 10th, 2007 at 12:41 am
Disgraceful
April 10th, 2007 at 2:04 am
That’s outrageous! Not least because I’ve read and thoroughly enjoyed fmc almost every day for more than a year now. I consider her a great blog-pal and it just enrages me that someone thought they could steal her work like this. I’m going to write to that paper about the plagiarising arsehole they have working for them. I’m not Irish so they won’t give a shit what I think but I want this Andrea Byrne woman to get a whole stink-load of bad publicity over this. She should be made to apologize publicly to fmc for thieving her work. Almost word for freakin’ word! The blatancy! The laziness! The theft!
fmc bashes out agile, thoughtful, articulate stuff almost every day. It’s always lively and well written and has a kick to it that many print journalists don’t have. Somebody should check to the Byrne bint hasn’t nicked anything else from her, before this. If there’s an upside to this, it’s that fmc’ll start to get the readership numbers she deserves. I don’t actually know what her readership numbers are but she deserves to be a lot better known. Byrne did pick one of the best to plagiarise, we should give her that; right before she gets kicked out of her office and back to journalism ethics class. What a bloody liberty!
April 10th, 2007 at 5:44 am
Shouldn’t the Sindo immediately sack the journalist – isn’t that what’s supposed to happen for such cases of plagiarism? If it was a book or a magazine article that had been plagiarised likw this wouldn’t t have the sacking have happened by now?
April 10th, 2007 at 7:22 am
Haha…I don’t know how she expected to get away with it. Does she think us blog-readers live in little shacks on the side of mountains and only get out information about the world from the internet?
April 10th, 2007 at 7:36 am
It could’ve been worse. It could’ve been Brenda Power. The shame of that!
April 10th, 2007 at 9:40 am
Didn’t Phoenix magazine run a small feature recently based on an email that the editor of the Sindo sent to his journos telling them it wasn’t acceptable to cut’n'paste from blogs and call them articles…
April 10th, 2007 at 9:44 am
Did they indeed? Didn’t see it though.
April 10th, 2007 at 11:25 am
Yup, the crowd at the Sunday Business Post did the same thing to me , the Journalist copied and pasted from irishsurfer.com direct to the magazine suppliment, added a few photos and changed the name of irishsurfer.com in the feature to a shops!!
I rang them twice, but to no avail.
April 10th, 2007 at 11:27 am
Actually, just wondering when Radio Stations will catch up and start bringing out music “Debut-Exclusives” off the back of podcasts??
April 10th, 2007 at 11:47 am
FYI the Phoenix did do a little piece about how Ian O’Doherty from the Indo lifted something on a psychiatrist straight out of another book. That was bad enough, but no where near as bad as this. I think the worst thing in Andrea Byrne’s piece was when she fabricated her little chat with this taxi driver, lifted straight out of fatmammycat’s blog. If she is prepared to invent conversations that never happened, how do we know that any other quotes she has taken, or anecdotes that she has referred to, ever actually happened?
April 10th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
jjj – you hit the snail on the head. can’t trust these people.not exactly a bunch of orwells are they. don’t buy their paper. gives good journalists a bad name. doubt they even know what a code of ethics looks like.
http://www.nuj.org.uk/inner.php?docid=59
April 10th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
Totally disgraceful. But then, it is the Sindo. They just rewrite press releases and wire stories all day! Doesn’t make it right though…
See Blogorrah has your story on their front page now, check it out.
April 10th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
It’s pretty obvious the lads over at Blogorrah only read Twenty’s piece and not the full text of both articles in question.
But then, Blogorrah is the Red Top of the Irish blogosphere.
April 10th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Sadly this happens quite a lot. I’ve had stuff pinched from my blog and seen it (not always rejigged) passed off as the work of some lazy hack. It’s very frustrating.
April 10th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
Is there any chance it would be a coincidence? I’ve been reading Ms.Byrne’s pieces for some time. She seems to be an intelligent writer and someone who wouldn’t need to do this. It would have been so easy to change the words if she had actually read it. Eg “Resounding” to “Definite.” I doubt she even read the first piece
April 10th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
Come off it. Some of it is word for word. Some of it she has changed slightly. No way is it coincidence.
April 10th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
The women is a witless clit!*
*Yes, I am aware I’ve plagerised that insult.
April 10th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
“She seems to be an intelligent writer and someone who wouldn’t need to do this”
Really? In the same article she wrote:
“for every stylish and refined Irish woman, there are at least two belligerent, brassyballsy broads busrting out of two tight clothes, roaring about getting pssed or the previous nights sexual conquest”.
Is this from personal observation, impirically, objectively and statistically noted or just a lazy, opinionated ill informed
600 word piece of shit? A Mary Ellen Synon lite rant about how vulgar “the irish” are compared to the gentile sophistication of our european fellow travellers. The Sindo regularly comes out with this mindless shit.
Emer O’Kelly was at the same thing on the same page regarding the Galway water crisis spouting the same old self flaggelating bullshit, “we’re a filthy race as we’re a drunken race…still trying to deny our propensity for wallowing in muck and mire”. More suited to a Victorian penny-dreadful than a 21st century broadsheet.
April 10th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Intelligent my hole.If she was intelligent she’d have at least tried to change the wording…
“I doubt she even read the first piece” again my hole!
April 10th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
Jamesmc – have you completely lost your marbles? If you think that this was all just a simple misunderstanding, you need to go back to leaving cert statistics, honours level. I’ve been doing the maths, and have worked out that the chances of the first piece – about the poll among male friends – being a coincidence is roughly one in 53,303. The odds of the second part – the conversation with the taxi driver – are even greater, at one in 57,444. But the odds of both of these exchanges happening to two completely different people, around nine months apart are exactly one in seven hundred million gazillion. Ok, so maybe there is a small chance…
April 10th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
no surprise in this. i’d remind you all that the indo published an entirely made-up story which was manufactured by posters on the p45.net forum a few years back – this was the one about berlusconi demanding the return of the carravagio from the national gallery. it was total waffle but this didn’t deter the indo from slapping across the front page of their website and claiming it as a major journalistic coup.
the indo, sindo and every other rag associated with them are everything contemptible, idiotic and moronic in irish journalism. low-brow, knuckle-dragging idiocy for ITV-watching, KFC-eating mongs whose lens on the world is shaped by what cabbage-brained retards like Kevin Myers tell them.
oh glory of glory for permalinking and the lovely way in which it exposes their knee-jerk plagarism. again.
April 10th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
Birdbath, that’s classic. Is it still online?
April 10th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
i’ll see if i can find a link. i know p45 shifted all the blogs around a while back (after i stomped off to blather…). one mo.
April 10th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
right. here’s the (now slightly bolloxed) blog from p45: http://www.p45rant.net/blogs/pquarantecinq/archives/001056.html
the curious part is that all the links to the original articles on the indo site are dead. also the copy from the front page is gone from the pdf for that day. perhaps they’ve removed the evidence…
in fairness to them they weren’t the only ones duped by the bullshit stories – several papers and radio stations ran that story (any many others that were made up on those forums) as fact. until, one bright spark at RTE had a revolutionary thought and used this new fangled thing called ‘Google’ to see what she could find.
What followed was one of the funniest bouts of meedja hand-wringing and outrage the country had ever seen – a humble discussion forum had proved beyond doubt that most Irish ‘newspapers’ were nothing of the kind and were, in point of fact, filthy rags for delivering audiences to advertsisers, who parrot almost any crap that they’re fed and then have the gall to cry foul when shown up as the cheap hacks they are.
ah, the heady days of the youthful interweb. damn i miss them.
April 10th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
That’s fucking brilliant.
April 10th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
my personal favourite was the one we (i mean the p45.net members) made up about the ‘mysterious underground tunnels beneath clontarf’. bus, the chap that owns p45, was in the back of a taxi some weeks after the story had been in several papers and was told the story by the taxi driver. when he tried to suggest that perhaps it had been nonsense, the driver became adamant that it was true cos he’d read it in the paper. hehehe.
April 10th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
Of course, you have put “journalist” in inverted commas, because she is not really a journalist is she, even though she writes for – like it or not – the biggest-selling newspaper in Ireland. Finally, Twenty Major gets to prove that – yes, bloggers are the real journalists! Thanks for enlightening us! Of course, you would never use anyone else’s work/steal anyone else’s jokes for this little website you use to validate your existence, would you?
April 10th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
Well, I just thought out of respect to other journalists I should use the apostrophes (not inverted commas).
Did I suggest for one second that bloggers were the real journalists? No. I merely suggested it was ironic that a newspaper that recently ran a feature article on how pathetic and useless blogs were should use content from a blog to fill out their Sunday rag.
And if you’ve got something else to say, just say it. Don’t be a fucking chickenshit all your life.
April 10th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
i’m guessing she writes for the herald. the BIG SHOUTY CAPS and quivering moral rage are a dead giveaway.
April 10th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
ditto
April 10th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
I see you all read the Sunday Independent in great depth, which is funny, for people who claim they don’t read the Sunday Independent. Anyway, I’m off to do a bit of real work, doubtless I’ll catch you people in the same place next year, complaining about the same things…
April 10th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
Big Mac and large fries, please.
April 10th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
ah kevin. no need to be like that.
see you in a year so.
April 10th, 2007 at 5:08 pm
Twenty will you get that barbeque sauce for me twisty fries?
April 10th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
It’s clear that FatmammyCat is in fact, Andrea Byrne, AND in her spare time moonlights as a cabbie.
April 10th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
macavity the mystery cat indeed
April 10th, 2007 at 7:59 pm
That’s one of my two favourite poems. The other one is The Raven, after that I hate all poetry.
All righty, off to watch football.
Good evening all.
April 10th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
This happens a lot. And not just in the Sindo.
And no doubt we’ll all be here next year complaining about fucktard journalists stealing other people’s work and then getting paid for it, because God knows, they’ve been at this sort of thing for years.
It would be nice if somebody started up a Rogues Gallery where we could see the faces of these fine journalists alongside copies of “their” work.
April 10th, 2007 at 10:42 pm
LAFRANCAISE,
did Aengus get on the blower and demand you troll old 20 poste haste or he’d whip your ass?
Reading the Sindo is like rubbernecking a killer pileup on the M50, irrisistable but full of messy shit that you regret observing instantly.
Now come clean ma petit poulet and declare your interests. You either work for INM or deranged to be defending them (or possibly both).
April 11th, 2007 at 8:29 am
I just can’t believe the press would lie to us, :::sobs::: though not even the Sun would steal my crap.
April 11th, 2007 at 8:54 pm
As well as the Berlusconi jape we (bunch of posters on p45) also got this one onto 2FM, the Indo breaking news section, Fox News and the Daily Mirror. The Daily Mirror even made up an interview with the fictitious people and their parents in the story:
“Fireworks And Fear Mar Independence Day Celebrations for “code-talking” Irish Brother and Sister
Fri Jul 5, 7:01 AM ET
By Sam Hudson
WASHINGTON – Fear and fireworks marked the first U.S. Independence Day since Sept. 11, with military jets in the skies and anti-terrorism troops on the ground guarding Americans determined to celebrate the Fourth of July.
Despite government warnings of the potential for a new attack, millions of people overcame their nerves and congregated at massive, traditional fireworks displays in major cities on the most patriotic date in the U.S. calendar.
But, reflecting a sometimes schizophrenic way of life that has emerged since hijacked planes slammed into U.S. landmarks and killed thousands of people, the State Department had also urged Americans worldwide to avoid crowded places because of possible suicide strikes.
At one such fireworks display in Springfield, Illinois, a Gaelic-speaking brother and sister were detained by anti-terrorist police for apparently speaking in ‘code’.
Michael (20) and Sharon (23) O’Toole, of Cobh, in Cork County, Ireland, are fluent speakers of the Irish language. While on vacation from college in Ireland, they were attending the fireworks display in downtown Springfield. They were talking between themselves when FBI officials swooped.
“We were just commenting on the fireworks to each other when these guys in suits showed us their badges and swept us off. It was like something from a movie.”, said Michael to reporters.
FBI anti-terrorist agents became suspicious of the pair when they noticed them alternately speaking in fluent English and a “code” language not recognised to be of Eastern or European origin. Agents had been given special training in linguistics in the weeks running up to the holiday.
The pair were released without charge, after Irish consulate officials confirmed their identities”
April 12th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
jesus…rofl@irish newspapers
April 12th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
“”I love the way ‘real’ journalists”"
“You missed the marks around the word “journalists” as well”"
April 13th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
I think you need to have a chat with this lad:
http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=178543624&albumID=0&imageID=1648730
April 15th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
Twenty,
With regards to the login required for unison, that’s very easy to get around :)
April 18th, 2007 at 2:43 am
Read the Epoch Times, it’s much better. Lifting copy (from other journalists) has long been frowned upon by Journalists, however, they probably don’t have such a problem doing it from blogs.
Incidentally, a lot of staffing journos use Google for most of their ‘research.’ I was talking to an author the other day who told me “because Google returns an article from 1985 about me when you search for my name, every time I’m in a newspaper, they say “still does all his work on a typewriter” even though I stopped using it in the 80s, the lazy bastards.”
The woman probably Googled “drunk mates” or something and thought she’d struck the jackpot (hence it being 6 months old and well indexed by then…)
What a cunt.
April 21st, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Typical Sindo fare. Remember when they reported Liam Lawlor died with a prostitute in the back of his car and had to grovel to the family looking for forgiveness? Yup thorough folks working in there I’d say.
April 21st, 2007 at 7:02 pm
The Phoenix covered this in their Fit to Print section of the current edition, this is the last par…
“Byrne’s article provoked an outcry in the days that followed her article among bloggers enraged at what they saw as plagiarism but two correspondents suggested that Fatmammycat must be Byrne”.
April 21st, 2007 at 7:19 pm
If they’d bothered reading the comments properly they’d know that wasn’t the case.
April 22nd, 2007 at 7:14 pm
Again?!
Didn’t some paper rob redmum’s photos a while back, too? Here tis: duckgate explained, Metro were the culprits.
And the muppets at the Evening Herald had quite a spate a year or so ago of trawling through (and copy-&-pasting, by the looks of things) the contents of the message boards of Gaire to inform the masses of what The Gays thought of whatever public figures and events. So, it would seem that this is not the first time the hacks at Independent News & Media have resorted to the laziest possible “writing technique”.
Dickheads.
November 20th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
[...] last week’s edition. Regular blog reads might remember Andrea as the ‘journalist’ exposed by Twenty Major last year of plagarising articles from the internet for her Sunday Independent [...]
December 10th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
[...] Twenty [...]
December 12th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
[...] what if you’re put out because your blog words have appeared under a journalist’s name in a newspaper now assembled in Talbot [...]
December 14th, 2007 at 10:02 am
[...] been well covered that some Independent News & Media staffers are fond of appropriating bits of writing [...]
December 18th, 2007 at 8:45 am
Excellent List: my first nomination would be the Rail Procurement Agency who get it for managing to spunk public money without producing anything on integrated ticketing for four years. When quizzed why they couldn’t merely reproduce systems in place in other countries they fumbled through some bullshit about “Dublin” being particularly complicated. The only complicated thing about Dublin is the consistent ability to forego the usual accountability that public bodies should have. Bunch of Cunts
December 18th, 2007 at 8:50 am
Oh and surely every fucker who voted for the current governmaent and then starts whining when it seems to be going wrong, and my next door neigbour who bought a speedboat with his SSIA and takes get pleasure in testing the engine on a Sunday Morning and driving round the estate with it on his trailer so we all think he is super cool. I have never wanted a limpet mine so much in my life.
December 19th, 2007 at 12:24 am
The sunday independent is a sex-obsessed rag.
I’ve read the paper a few times and thought to myself “that person is actually lying for a story”.
Cunts.