Barcelona’s Xavi loves to talk about Cesc Fabregas. We know this already. So when the Express gave him a chance to wax lyrical on his favourite subject he was quite happy to do so.
As is happens these days stories are basically copied and pasted across various news sites, all of whom are looking for clicks and hits to boost their advertising revenue. FIFA.com, home of the people who run football, did just that with the Xavi story. Screenshot below.
BEFORE
Those who question the wisdom of FIFA sanctioning this kind of public tapping-up are absolutely right. First to do so was Arsenal blogger Goonerholic. And so it spiralled from there, across many other blogs, Twitter etc, until FIFA decided they’d best do something about it, and removed the story.
AFTER
I suppose it’s better late than never but never would have been far preferable. Our expectations of FIFA are low but they should not be associated with anything that runs contrary to the rules, legal or moral, of the game. I don’t need to go off on one about the way Barcelona have behaved this summer. Everybody knows they have been appalling but this is just another example of how standards of ‘journalism’ on the web are so poor.
Just a couple of weeks ago mainstream media outlets ran an article quoting Arsene Wenger, based on a supposed interview in a Kenyan newspaper. Arsenal denied any such interview took place, egg was left firmly on faces, and stories quietly deleted. The point is the story should have been checked out in the first place.
Websites and blogs, both club specific and those dealing with football in general, rehash stories from official sources without so much as a link or accreditation. They pass themselves off as news outlets when, in reality, they’re nothing but copy and paste merchants who can barely put a few lucid sentences together. They are stealing content and making money from other people’s work.
It’s easy to be a leech, anyone who can use CTRL+V/P is capable of generating hits, page views, visits and income, yet nobody ever says anything about it. Nobody bats an eyelid because it’s somehow become the norm. There’s so much chaff out there it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find the wheat.
If I were to take somebody’s music, book, film, screenplay, and then reproduce it with one or two minor changes I’d be liable for legal action. When it comes to football journalism, however, it seems anybody’s work is fair game and can be re-used in any way. It’s essentially theft and profiteering from the work of others. Why is this acceptable?
Anyway, well done for FIFA for taking the Fabregas story down. It would be far better if greater standards existed in the first place and it never went up to begin with.
Maybe it’ll make them introduce stricter editorial controls. We can but hope.
Just to clarify something. Most large sites, like FIFA, will not be copying and pasting this content. They will buy in a repository of generic sport stories from a large agency like PA, AFP etc and then those stories will probably publish automatically to their site. In effect, I doubt they selected this intenationally as a story to publish, it was probably just in their feed, however it does go to show how their neglect in doing anything about Cesc’s tapping up has allowed the story to run on to such an extent that it is now turning up on their own site. Muppets.
Alex, yeah, fair point … all the same it just goes to show how little merit there is in the news sections of most of these sites.
LETS ALL LAUGH AT (CORRUPT) FIFA!!!