Paperchase has published a statement on the contact section of its web site about the alleged copyright theft of work by independent artist Hidden Eloise. The stationery firm said that it purchased the image in good faith from a small London based design company called Gather No Moss.
“[…] In this case, we would like to confirm that Paperchase bought the artwork in question, in good faith, in October 2008, from a well-known central London Design Studio along with a number of other designs. The illustrator who is making the allegation made us aware of her concerns in November 2009 and we duly responded to her in early December, since when we had heard nothing….until today. Back in November 2009, we spoke at length to the Design Studio in question and they categorically denied any plagiarism.”
Gather No Moss also released a statement via Paperchase.
“We have contacted Hidden Eloise by email and are hoping to talk with her soon. We carry the work of designers who like Hidden Eloise are all trying hard to make a living through their art. We would never knowingly sell a design that infringes the copyright of a fellow artist.”
These are robust responses. But Hidden Eloise remains unimpressed either by the tactics or the response from either Paperchase or Gather No Moss – and she has the mob rule of Twitter on her side.
Hidden Eloise’s blog post went viral this afternoon fuelled by the indignation of Twitter users. There is almost certainly a case to answer but the speed with which a story circulates around a network in a case such as this means that basic tenants of journalistic practise are frequently left in its trail.
The Handbook of Journalism published by Thompson Reuters seeks to uphold the highest levels of journalistic integrity set out in its Trust Principals. All major news publishers have similar codes. Reuters has a very clear position on stories sourced via networks.
“It is important to remember that Twitter and similar sites are not sources per se. It is wrong to talk, for example, about picking up Twitter. It makes no more sense to source a story to Twitter than to source it to the internet or an email.”
Reuters is also very clear that a story should have an original source.
“You must source every statement in every story unless it is an established fact or is information clearly in the public domain, such as court documents or in instances when the reporter, photographer or camera operator was on the scene.”
It also a well-defined approach to the principal of fairness when an allegation is made by a third party.
“The act of seeking confirmation of the news before publishing it can lead the organisation to front-run our story and announce the information before we have a chance to put our story out. This does not relieve us of the responsibility to give an organisation a fair chance to comment. […]”
The Paperchase story has followed the first two guidelines but not the third. A story about a third-party propagates through a network until it is directly countered. This is yet another example of how social networks are accelerating the news cycle and don’t necessarily adhere to journalistic standards.
It is telling that Paperchase had not set up a Twitter feed (@FromPaperchase) until today and that its response has been published not on a blog but on the contact page of its web site. Companies must engage in the channels used their customers. And for Paperchase that’s clearly social media.
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When you say ‘the paperchase story’ I don’t really know what exactly you are referring to and therefore what entity journalistic standards are absent from.
It’s a good post, Stephen, that begs the question: is it online democracy at work, or mob rule?
Clearly, the advent of user generated content is going to by-pass most, if not all, accepted journalistic practice fretted over in newsrooms every day of the week. From my days working in editorial, the first concern was “Is this story true?”, closely followed by “What’s the chance of getting sued?”
But how can an organisation sue a multitude of Twitter users, as ill-informed as they may be? That’s what makes communities in social media dangerous for organisations – your detractors are disparate and are not playing by the usual rules, where the big beast with the deep pockets wins.
It also underestimates the power of the blog, with its inherent shareability of content and ease of distribution via social channels.
Paperchase, IMHO, has always had a quirky, appealing brand image more akin to an independent shop than a chain. A storm in social media can soon put paid to that.
@Chris Dymond When I cited the “Paperchase story” I meant the mechanism by which news of the alleged copyright infringement was communicated via an original blog post and then Twitter, versus conventional media.
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Just goes to show what happens when you are not part of the conversation on social networks. (Not early enough in Paperchase’s situation).
Journalistic practices are all well and good but one could argue the “genie is out of the bottle” already, in this case with Twitter, and it will take some pretty drastic PR to counter this crisis.
The word of mouth was already circulating on this story even before the traditional media could react. That said there is a risk of misinformation on social networks, much in the same way as chinese whispers.
Just goes to show the importance of listening to your customers (and suppliers) via social media is very important.
I’m don’t use Twitter at all, but I don’t think people should disregard it out of hand as being an un-robust source of information. Especially not when you look at the amount of PR releases and ‘unnamed sources’ that are routinely used by the British media on a daily basis and dressed up as news. It’s commonly accepted these days that anonymous marketing / PR employees or government ministers simply pass on their chosen snippets of news (or product press releases) to lazy media hacks who then regurgitate it all whole and pretty much unedited. That’s the state of modern journalism in many, but not all, cases – pretty poor if you ask me.
At least most of the people who use Twitter can be traced back to real end users with email addresses and websites. Ignore them at your peril from the look of it too.
This is what happens when companies don’t engage consumers in the space they choose to occupy. Sooner or later it’s going to take a company down. Paperchase seem to have no mechanism to engage or even communicate with their customers beyond a static website. It’s not 1995.
I’d argue whether this was a case of mob rule. Nearly everyone reacted after reading a source – the link to the original blog was widely circulated. People retweeting the source didn’t necessarily do so because they were blindly coerced by the actions of others. I saw the retweet, read the blog and retweeted it myself. Because I use Tweetdeck, I didn’t realise the topic was trending. From the outside, the activity appeared coordinated but almost certainly wasn’t. The message was spread virally – that’s not the same thing.
Also, how ill-informed was the ‘mob’? In the case of Jan Moir’s piece on Stephen Gately, Twitter users had access to the source material at all times. The fact the majority were repulsed by it doesn’t make it mob rule, as they certainly weren’t ill-informed.
The Paperchase incident should be a lesson to every single company. As I said on another blog, one company I know of once said Twitter was unappealing because it gave customers the chance to “stab them in the front”. My take on that is it also gives the business the opportunity to look their customer in the eye and shake their hand.