Sky’s economics editor Ed Conway has accused the Financial Times of “statistical plagiarism” after he said the business title took data from his blog without attribution.
Conway wrote a blog on Wednesday on the woes of British Steel which included data charts (sourced from a number of different channels) showing steel output in UK and China. The blog was published on Conway’s own website.
One of the data charts has been published by the Financial Times without attributing that it was sourced from Conway’s blog.
Conway said on Twitter:
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WTF? This is statistical plagiarism. @FT nabs my chart from here w/o any attribution https://t.co/iW3qSMMET9 https://t.co/czeiERupGf
— Ed Conway (@EdConwaySky) March 31, 2016
Conway, who has nearly 30,000 followers on the social network, later tweeted that an FT journalist has contacted him about the data. To verify this, Conway published a screen grab of the letter.
The email from the FT reporter this morning. FWIW data was from WSA and Longman Handbook of Modern British history pic.twitter.com/hyoQkuWLdu
— Ed Conway (@EdConwaySky) March 31, 2016
Conway, who is also a columnist with The Times, later appeared to adopt a more conciliatory tone.
Of course, one shdn't get too precious abt this. But it often takes hours to dig thru data. Poor form for @FT to steal it w/o attribution
— Ed Conway (@EdConwaySky) March 31, 2016
The FT said it has subsequently attributed one of the sources as Conway's blog.
A spokesman for the FT said: " At the time of publication, we credited the World Steel Association as it appeared on the original chart in question. As soon it came to our attention that the chart warranted additional sourcing, we immediately corrected the chart. We take sourcing and data very seriously."
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