This post was about Thai Visa.com’s rather dubious new ‘news service’ and has been deleted. While I stand by the contents, on reflection it may have been a little harsh on one chap whom I guess is just trying to get by in Thailand. I do remain concerned at the news sources at ThaiVisa.com the inherent dangers of reality becoming fantasy and vice versa, and also the widespread lifting of stories from other sites without crediting those sources. But a bigger voice within tells me why give a damn.
Thanks for all your comments by the way. Some just came in after I had decided to close the post. More than a few I did not publish because once again they were mainly just rants against ThaiVisa. Those published here came after the deletion of the item.
I think as professional writers, we all need to be concerned about plagarism and copyright infringement. And the bigger the voice, the better. As someone who writes for some pretty big newspapers, your voice would be a big one against lazy, sloppy “journalist” like TV has decided to use to pad its coffers even further.
The fact of the matter is that most of us probably think something along the lines of “ThaiVisa & nothingness”.
To be blunt, it is probably not worth your while running a blog with your high public profile. You might be better off running a plain non-interactive investigation site with email links for those who want to contact you with a lead. A site on which you can’t work through a few emotions is ….., like ThaiVisa, Ajarn.com and several others, …. a nothingness. That said, your investigative work undoubtedly has a great deal of value. Perhaps best to do what you do best and let blogging go hang itself.
OSN. I’m coming round to your way of thinking!
However it appears the story did not go unnoticed. I’m getting sms messages from the Thaivisa reporter . The last one was just three words.
‘You ******* c**t’
My asterisks. He does not self-edit.
^ Sure it wasn’t a secret red-shirt handshake?
HA: Yes. If that is something like a Glasgow Kiss.
Shades of Derrick & Clive Live by the sounds of things. RU ******* SMSing me C****? Yuh, I’m SMSing you C***!
There is very much about thaivisa.com that does not meet the eye of an ordinary web-surfer. The issues are mostly related to their business interests and actually they have……
(Whoopsadaisy Petteri. Had to stop you there. Sorry. I dont want this site to look like the other site you mention.)
As a journalist, I have no problem with webforums getting bloggers to do original material for them (though invariably they are riffs on old media stories).
What I do have a problem with is forums carrying out massive copyright theft by reproducing web content of other sites - those ones who pay reporters. These sites’ hit counts are reduced and that knocks on to ad revenues. Ad revenue which is transferred to the forum publishers.
Even though web forums usually have more internal rules than you can count, they turn a blind eye to their own lawbreaking. In fact those that copy and paste the most stories seem to be quite proud of themselves. There’s no point advising these Forums of their bad conduct; for, motivated by their own ad revenues their parasitical behaviour is sacrosanct.
Ironically many web posters complain about poor standards of journalism, without realising that their own sense of entitlement for free news is killing the industry. If the Post or the Nation folded, they’d be first to scream.
I doubt the MCOT or any other body in Thailand has much interest in copyright theft in the media, so I guess it will just carry on regardless.
Simon: Yes it will carry on. Actually I have no problem with people reproducing my stories (as this is not a commercial site) provided the source is credited or if they pay. London newspapers use my stories under local staff bylines all the time, but they pay for doing that. The recent drowning of a boy in Pattaya is one example of that. My original story appeared under many bylines. http://www.andrew-drummond.com/2009/07/12/family-horror-as-boy-dies-trapped-in-thai-theme-park-tunnel/
There appears to be evidence that Thai newspapers could not fully report on this story.
http://www.pattayadailynews.com/showfeature.php?FeatureID=0000001318
If this was a commercial site I guess I’d be annoyed.
News stories I tend to not put up until they are sold/published elsewhere. The other content here is basically more background on the stories which newspapers do not have the space to carry. (They do on the web though!)
It’s a tough world for journalists at the moment and Foreign Correspondents are dying like flies in this region. The SE Asia Editor of the Times for instance is based in Sydney!
If I give a story to The Times its up on the web by midday - 6am London time leaving the whole day for British newspapers to cut lift and rejig if they so chose. So I have to talk to their early desks.
By switching my acceditation to the London Standard newspapers can lift (a limited amount) from there and quote ’says the Evening Standard’ but at least this paper is on the streets first and puts not too much up on the net. In that sense I am a little old fashioned.
At least one of the local Bangkok English language newspapers seem to have lost direction. What’s more if people can see their stories on the web on other sites why bother buying the newspapers and indeed why promote another site’s internet forum?
Its a funny old world. That why I stick to commissions and stuff other people don’t or won’t do.
Ditto in Hong Kong. Reporters are finding life tough and there are some extremely good people losing their jobs.
The great unsolved conundrum for media organisations is ‘how to monetarise the web?’ given that their print editions are suffering.
Yes, the idea was always to sell advertising to support the free content, but somehow ad salesmen don’t seem to bring home the bacon online.
So even though imitation is flattery, it compounds the frustration when other publishers/forums copy and paste (and don’t even pay a cub reporter to rewrite the copy!).
When the going is good, everyone can eat well - including the parasites. When its not, then you don’t want them taking the food out of your family’s mouths !
The good news is that there is a partial solution. Its a online page that can’t be highlighted/copy/pasted. Bit like a pdf. That way the originator at least retain the traffic, and have a prayer of getting the online advertisers.