Fairfax journalists Vanda Carson and IT scribe Asher Moses have both found themselves in hot water recently, Carson for wrongly reporting that a former tech PR consultant Vivienne Dye had received a $20,000 payout for workplace bullying from her former employer Vodafone and had spent it on a “boob” job and Moses stands accused of “Stealing” stories from other technology web sites.
A well respected web site MacTalk facilitates discussion about the Apple Mac market. Visitors to the site have accused Moses of reading their site, stealing their scoops and not giving credit back to the original writer of the story.
 A CNet Image |
“Give us the fXXXing credit for it”, one of the MacTalk podcasters writes. “It’s stealing if you don’t give credit”. “It’s not fair”. “We just want a link” they said. When Moses tries to defend himself one contributor to the site wrote.
“If you think we are making you out to be” a plagiarist, then you don’t understand the definition of the word. When you use information, without attributing the source that’s plagiarism.
That’s not interpretation, that’s fact. And when does the story “warrant” a link? When it’s 95% MacTalk content, or does it have to be 99%? I give you credit for actually showing up to defend yourself, but you can’t really expect us to believe you.”
This is not the first time that Moses has found himself being slammed for his actions. 16 months ago Moses had a run in with the editor of TechCrunch a local technology blog site run by Paul Montgomery. Under the headline: The Asher Moses Debacle” Montgomery wrote. A reporter from the Sydney Morning Herald named Asher Moses emailed me and said “First off, great site – I’m a regular reader of yours.” He then went on to say he’s working on a story about the “disclosure scrubbed at TechCrunch debacle.”
I took issue with his use of the term “debacle” before actually speaking to me – this tells me everything I need to know about this particular reporters slant on this “story,” and basically told him to fuck off”
For Carson the matter is a lot more serious with Fairfax and Carson facing the possibility of being sued by Vivienne Dye who found herself in the headlines last week after taking action to try and get a $1 million dollar payout from the Commonwealth Bank. She claimed that she had been harassed by the bank’s head of local business banking, Michael Blomfield, and the head of sales at the premium business services division, Angus Patterson.
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| News Ltd Image: Vivienne Dye in New York |
Dye who is well known by the IT media and many IT vendors has worked with Vodafone, Upstream, Text 100, Burson-Marsteller and Gotley Nix Evans. Carson claimed in the SMH last week that Dye had made a claim against Vodafone for harassment and had received a $20,000 payout. Money they say she spent on a “Boob job”.
According to Vodafone this is not true and that all payments to Dye were provided as part of her normal remuneration.
It appears that Carson had not bothered to contact Vodafone to check the fact with Dye’s lawyer Peter Rochfort now looking at taking legal action against Fairfax over the claims.
A Vodafone spokesman said Ms Dye, “left of her own accord” in December 2004, saying there were no claims against colleagues on her employment record.
It appears that Carson had not bothered to contact Vodafone to check the fact with Dye’s lawyer Peter Rochfort now looking at taking legal action against Fairfax over the claims.
