Last month, Mathias Brunet went to meet Daniel Brière and Pierre-Luc Dubois in Philadelphia and Washington to The PressThe report, which cost several hundred dollars, was financed in part by donations from readers. A wise investment: Mathias returned home with articles that you appreciated.
You’re not the only ones to have devoured them.
Aggregation sites like Hockey30 and Habsolument Fan pounced on it like piranhas on a piece of fresh flesh. They rehashed the text a bit, kept the quotes, then regurgitated articles for their own websites. Their editing effort was minimal. For his article on Pierre-Luc Dubois, David Garel (Hockey30) had kept not 1, not 2, but 15 quotes from the original interview. Even if he gave credit to Mathias, it remains a pitiful intellectual laziness. The equivalent of a lazy student who adds his name in pen to the term paper of a hard-working colleague.
If only this were an isolated or sporadic situation. But no. Piranha sites are happily picking from the buffet of original content produced by traditional media. Do they pay for it? Of course not. Otherwise, the thriving industry of article theft would collapse.
Where do piranhas find their audience?
On Facebook, where several media outlets whose content they aggregate are blocked.
For almost a year now, the main accounts of The Pressof Montreal Journalof Dutyof the Gazetteregional dailies, many radio and television stations as well as student newspapers are inaccessible on the social network. Links to the web pages of these sites simply no longer appear.
Despite this measure, 38% of French speakers in the country continue to get their news on Facebook, according to a study by the Reuters Institute published last summer. That’s huge. These people find their news in particular on the accounts of aggregator sites, which have greatly benefited from the blocking of other media.
Number of Facebook subscribers of some aggregator sites
- HabsetLNH: 192,000
- Hockey30: 139,000
- Go Nordiques: 115,000
- Fanadians: 82,000
- AllHabs: 55,000
- Marker: 51,000
- CHpourlavie: 22,000
This is why piranhas are hyperactive on Facebook. It’s also why you’re bombarded with articles with headlines that are as enticing as they are dramatic. Read last week: “Logan Mailloux is leaving Montreal, and we know why.” The young defenseman was about to be traded? Not at all. He simply flew out to participate in a photo shoot for hockey card manufacturer Upper Deck.
This competition for readers’ attention obviously gives rise to abuse. On July 5, David Garel (Hockey30) reported a rumor about Canadiens prospect Filip Mesar. “Filip Mesar is leaving Montreal,” he wrote. “He now finds himself at the center of trade rumors involving the Winnipeg Jets. According to what’s circulating, Mesar was offered in a trade aimed at obtaining Rutger McGroarty.”
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Filip Mesar
In the following days, aggregator sites Marqueur, Dose and HabsetLNH amplified the rumor. “Mesar and his family have really experienced difficult times, as the Slovakian prospect found himself at the center of rumors linking him to the Winnipeg Jets,” added Marc-André Dubois, also on Hockey30, on July 18.
The problem ?
Hockey30 had invented this story out of whole cloth.
“We started a rumor: why don’t we send him to Winnipeg with the Panthers’ pick, just to speculate,” David Garel told BPM Sports. “The next day, it was everywhere in Slovakia. All the sports media were talking about it. It made its way here.” Filip Mesar even had to comment on the (false) rumor.
David Garel was supposed to have a recurring column on BPM Sports this fall. The collaboration ended there. In a video about the Filip Mesar rumor that aired before this radio appearance, David Garel said: “We’re going to be here to start rumors. We’re going to be here to talk about the drama of hockey, and then it’s just for fun.”
Not sure that Mesar found his summer “fun”. No more than the other hockey players and their loved ones who are the targets of real or fictional gossip peddled by sites like Hockey30.
And what about the role of Facebook’s parent company, Meta, in this ecosystem?
By giving oxygen to piranhas, Meta not only ensures their survival, but also their growth. This is a distressing social irresponsibility.
The worst part is that Meta says it is blocking all “news media,” which it defines as “enterprises whose primary purpose is to produce news content, in any format, that reports, investigates, or explains current issues or events of public interest.”
Let me humbly submit to him the following wording, found on David Garel’s site. “Hockey30 offers you original and unpublished content. Minute by minute, 24 hours a day, Hockey30 is here to offer you daily coverage of the Montreal Canadiens and the NHL.” Then this: “Hockey30.com specializes in the production and distribution of news websites.”
Hmmm.
1 + 1 = 2, right?
I sincerely hope that Meta will stop blocking, and that media that invest in original and quality information will regain their reach on Facebook. But if Meta insists so much on keeping a hard line, at least let it be consistent.
That it puts piranhas in the same pool as traditional media.
What the law says
There Copyright Law protects journalistic content. It provides an exception in the case of “fair dealing of a work or other subject-matter for the communication of news.” The original source must be acknowledged. Fairness depends on six criteria established by the Supreme Court of Canada: the purpose, nature and extent of the dealing, the existence of alternatives, the nature of the work and the effect of the dealing on the work. The Press has already initiated legal proceedings to enforce its rights.