At 8.47 AM on 12 February I published a bearcast (HERE) with devastating new material on Quindell and Ingenie. As a courtesy I, at once, emailed a link to journalists who had followed this fraud including Paul Murphy and Dan McCrum of the Financial Times.
After noon on 13th February McCrum then ran the same story as his own giving no attribution. It was apparently his scoop - HERE.
This has been flagged up on the FT’s website with Bryce Elder of the FT weighing in saying that it was an FT scoop, they were working on it for a long time as “proper journalists need tome to check facts etc”. Fine but who ran the story first????
Mr Elder has form when it comes to lying in print. He was forced by his Editor to withdraw a piece about myself and Ben Edelman last April which may have pleased the PR of blinkx but sadly was …untrue.
Amazingly he really is lining himself up for a P45 by republishing it. I guess I shall have to print the email from the editor agreeing to pull the article.
I do not doubt that “proper journalists” need to check facts. I did just that before publishing at 8.47 AM on the 12th. The FT then had almost 28 hours to verify those facts which I had revealed and then claim the story as its own.
Memo to Bryce “The PR cocksucker” Elder and to his colleagues at the FT: “Proper journalists do not lift scoops from other folks and claim them as their own stories.”
When the FT has written good stuff on Quindell we have put up a link to the story and praised it. That is what we regard as basic etiquette.
The FT has been caught with its trousers down. We can track that folks at the FT logged into the bearcast. You should put a link up to the original story and apologise. And then sack Eldercock as he is becoming a growing embarrassment to our vocation.