CNN Reports on the Whirled Wind
As predicted earlier today, Michael Bates' story is taking the blogosphere by storm. The following is from the transcript of CNN's blog report with Jacki Schechner.


Another story that sort of relates to this we thought was interesting, it was rising on -- on (UNINTELLIGIBLE). We took a look at it, and it's been rising all day.

It's BatesLine.com. And it's a Tulsa, Oklahoma, blogger.

He got a letter from "Tulsa World," a local newspaper, that basically said, stop publishing bits and pieces of what we publish. And they sent him a letter, sort of a cease and desist, and said that we'll take legal action if you don't stop. You want to reprint anything that's on our -- in our newspaper, you need to get clearance for it.

So his call basically was, help me out here. I'm going to need to speak on behalf of all the bloggers.

And there's some of the bloggers who've responded -- Wizbang blog was an interesting response that we came up with. Kevin Aylward wrote a letter back to John Blair (ph), who is the VP of "Tulsa World." And this is the quote: "It's a bad idea to tangle with the community of Web blogs," and he refers to Rather (UNINTELLIGIBLE). And basically says, "When you attempt to silence them, you attempt to silence them all."

KURTZ: It sounds like he's saying nice little site you got here, it would be a shame if anything happened to it. But, you know, if this blogger is really just picking up bits and pieces from the biggest newspaper in Oklahoma's capital, and putting his own comments on it, everybody does that these days.

I do that every day on WashingtonPost.com. I provide the links. Other news organizations like that because it drives traffic to their sites. You can't just steal outright the entire editorial product. That's called theft.

SCHECHNER: Right.

KURTZ: But if you're just picking out bits and pieces, especially if you're linking to the source and crediting the source, then I'm not sure that "Tulsa World" is going to win on at least the public relations battlefield.

SCHECHNER: Well, that's what they were saying, that he's linking. And really that's not infringement or anything. So we'll keep an eye on it and see if this gets any bigger.