published the letter and claimed to have exclusive rights
to it. They even watermarked each page of the letter. Punch
and other media houses later wrote their own reports and
published unwatermarked version of the letter Premium Times is now accusing Punch and all the other media houses of plagiarism, claiming they stole their exclusive and refused to acknowledge them.
The Editor-in Chief of the Premium Times, Dapo
Olorunyomi, said
"Majority of the papers published the complete text of the
letter which was first revealed to the world by this
newspaper, and made available via our website. There
were also cases of shameless lifting of the original story
published by this medium. I am weirdly tickled at the
absence of humility in competitors who sought to ignore
accepting that they got the material from us and ended up
failing to offer their readers the source of the material
altogether."
Punch has reacted to the allegations, insisting Premium Times
was not the source of their report. See their statement after the
cut...
The online news medium, Premium Times, on Thursday,
falsely accused The PUNCH of republishing its version of the
letter that former President Olusegun Obasanjo wrote to
President Goodluck Jonathan without attribution.
We strongly repudiate this unfounded claim and deplore the
online news medium's recourse to hasty generalization in its
bid to claim the moral high ground.
Premium Times was neither the source of the information
used in our story nor the source of the text published.
The online medium would have avoided an "ethical flaw",
and served its readers well, if it had been careful to comply
with one of journalism's basic tenets by reaching out to The
PUNCH for its side of the story.
This newspaper would have readily shared relevant information pertaining to our story, particularly, the fact that it
was obtained from a source in the former President's office on
December 11, 2013 and also provided emails and PDF
document containing the 18-page letter in its original form.
That an online news medium publishes a document first does
not by any means suggest that it is the only medium (print or
online) with the information at the point in time.
Our decision not to state the source of the story was not for
the reason stated by the online medium. Indeed, Financial
Times (UK) also published the story without stating its
source, just like The PUNCH.
PUNCH's culture of professionalism is its strongest forte. We
provide clear attribution when stories are sourced and offer an
apology when errors are brought to our notice.
Martin Ayankola
Editor, The PUNCh
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