September 9th, 2005
Village versus Eddie Hobbs
Lax sports sub-editing must be the last thing on Village’s agenda this week. Vincent Browne’s weekly magazine usually hits the shelves on Friday but publication is on hold today after the publishers were threatened with legal action by George-Lee-plus-showmanship, Eddie Hobbs. Village has been poking around in Hobbs’ background and was to publish a piece in today’s issue about Hobbs’ time as a financial advisor with the Taylor investment group in the early 1990s. Hobbs - if you’ve been living in a cave - is the presenter of the Rip-Off Republic show on RTE. Whether you think it’s sensationalist whinging or that it will contribute to poll predictions of Fianna Fail losing 10-15 seats in the next election, people are still watching it in huge numbers.
And whatever you think about Vincent Browne, or even Village, he’s outspoken and usually worth a read. His
radio show on RTE can be riveting, particularly its coverage of the various Tribunals. A couple of months back, we had a verbatim case of plagiarism on Sigla. A journalist who couldn’t be arsed to write her own copy, ‘borrowed’ an album review that appeared on Sigla. At the time, I was doing some occasional book pieces for Village so I thought, if I’ve been plagiarised, who better to ask than arguably the most litigious man in Irish journalism. I duly rang up Vincent and asked his thoughts, being a newbie at having my work ripped off (no pun intended). His first response was to ask me why I even cared. The second, and his advice, was “For God sake, don’t sue, it’ll cost you a bloody fortune.”
Wise words of course, wonder if he’s pondering them this week…
September 9th, 2005 at 12:34 pm
Ooh, you must be loving this Sinead!
September 9th, 2005 at 12:47 pm
I’m just a sucker for a good media scrap.
September 9th, 2005 at 3:18 pm
What happened with your plagiarism case? Did you complain to the paper in question?
September 9th, 2005 at 5:15 pm
It’s still being sorted out and currently rests with the NUJ. I spoke to the editor and the journalist in question (”I was only googling for reference you know”) who both gave me the most laughable, not to mention conflicting, excuses ever.
Will keep you posted.
September 9th, 2005 at 5:34 pm
I do recall a colleague in the last university I worked in reading one of the world’s more popular current affairs journals and coming across an article he had written and published in an academic journal a number of months previously. Not under his name of course… I’m sure it happens more than we would suspect.