I am going to copy and paste what happened this week from an email I sent out to a couple of mates yesterday.
First, Gordon Smart printed this in his 'Bizarre' column about Burial on monday:
He conducted a Bizarre phone interview where he confessed: “Only five people know I make tunes.”
Except that was a total lie, that quote was from my face-to-face (not phone) interview in The Guardian. The quote was the headline to the article for god's sake, Smarting probably lifted it straight off Wikipedia.
I complained about this plagiarism about three times before I got a response. I was fobbed off with a lie about it being a subbing error:
this was a subbing error. Bizarre was lower case when I left the office. I wasn't passing it off as my own. I actually thought it was from The Wire?
This explanation is clearly twaddle. Gordon Smart sent a follow-up apologising, repeating the excuse, and offering me money, which of course I turned down:
Totally understand, and feel quite bad about it. It would drive me mad too as it had appeared. A bad mistake which I have slapped the wrists of a sub for. No ill-intentions I can assure you.
The thing is, by Wednesday he still hadn't found the time to correct the (much linked-to) original story, which was still claiming that Burial had given a phone interview to The Sun. I wrote him this email - in which, note, I specifically said the attribution did not need to name me:
since people are still linking to this article from the other day can you PLEASE get the online version changed immediately and correctly attribute it - it doesn't have to be to me, just the guardian - just not to bizarre. just change it so that you aren't continuing to claim it as your own 'phone' interview.
He then edited it to this, to make me look like a craven egotistical bastard:
He conducted a bizarre phone interview with music journalist Dan Hancox, who got his knickers in a twist when he didn't get a mention, where he confessed: "Only five people know I make tunes."
That is the end of a fucking shitty story. I was going to report him to the Press Complaints Commission but on the advice of the big man himself I'm going to allow him and move on. I would add that I think the Dubluke stuff is absolute gold though