Publishing someone else’s story

JEERS TO Rappler for republishing an article without the permission of its original publisher VERA Files and the articles’ coauthor.

After more than two months and a public exchange between the editors of the two media organizations, Rappler has apologized and the article has since been taken down. VERA Files editor Lala Ordenes, in a blog post on July 18, 2015, chronicled the timeline of events on the publishing and republishing of the VERA Files article (“Deaf athlete helps next generation of deaf athletes”, May 16, 2015).

The VERA Files article was under the byline of John Paul E. Maunes and Jake Soriano. Maunes submitted the published article to Rappler for publishing. Rappler published the article on June 5, 2015 under its citizen journalism arm MovePH,  but failed to check whether the article had been previously published. This led to Rappler’s failure to inform VERA Files and the story’s co-author that they were publishing the story.

Maunes is the executive director of the Philippine Accessible Deaf Service, formerly the Gualandi Volunteer Service Programme. He has previously written other articles for VERA Files on issues related to the plight of persons with disability.

In a public exchange between the editors of VERA Files and Rappler prior to the blog post, Ordenes tagged Rappler on Twitter and asked  its editors to take down the story from their website as it is a VERA Files story.

(https://twitter.com/LalaOrdenes/status/619367860339544064)

Based on Ordenes’ timeline, the editors of both organizations had been talking about the incident for weeks. She also shared the exchanges between her and Maunes.  In a reply to Ordenes’ post on Twitter about the post still uploaded on Rappler’s website, Chay Hofilena of Rappler said: “@LalaOrdenes @iamchrislao @rapplerdotcom Suggest you talk to Luz (Rimban) and know what happened before you tweet.” Rimban is one of the trustees of VERA Files.

(https://twitter.com/LalaOrdenes/status/621359115470663680)

(https://twitter.com/rapplerdotcom/status/621621089521655808)

(https://twitter.com/LalaOrdenes/status/621620680845451265)

CMFR asked Rappler on Twitter for their statement on the incident. Rappler replied: “@cmfr Your query has been received. Editors will be replying. Thank you.”

They then replied again and said: “@verafiles @cmfr The author was unaware of exclusive arrangements but we’re taking down the story; we apologize to VeraFiles.”

Rappler also published an erratum on their website: “Corrections: July 2015”.

(https://twitter.com/cmfr/status/622970095057252352)

Rappler also published the side of Rupert Ambil II, executive director of MovePH. Ambil said:

“For my part, I would like to emphasize to Ordenes that we published JP’s story in good faith. I sent my email with knowledge that was available to us at that time, and sent that same email only to specific people. We apologized because new information came to light – including the fact that JP was compensated and his work considered by VERA Files as exclusive.” (“When is it your story?”, July 21)

This is not the first time Rappler has run into trouble with the use of materials from other news organization. Here’s a post Rappler published to discuss errors it committed (“Rappler values transparency and accountability”, October 20, 2013)