By: Dave Astor Creators Syndicate President Richard S. Newcombe says a blog put Thomas Sowell's name on a piece the conservative columnist did not write, and that Creators has been frustrated in its attempts to get the "impersonation" deleted.
The conservative "Right Scale" blog -- at dickmcdonald.blogspot.com -- ran a July 29 post headlined "Random Thoughts of Thomas Sowell." (Actually, "Random" was spelled "Eandom" in the post.)
Sowell, Newcombe told E&P today, "started receiving e-mails from readers saying this didn't sound like him. He alerted me, and we alerted Google." That was via an Aug. 4 letter written by Creators Director of New Media Andrea Fryrear.
Google provides the tools for the blog via its Blogger program; Creators couldn't contact "Dick McDonald" because "The Right Scale" blog has no e-mail link and doesn't post comments.
Fryrear ended up getting a form-letter-type response from Google that included the phrase: "We strongly believe in freedom of expression...."
But Newcombe told E&P that "no one has a First Amendment right to theft or false attribution."
On Aug. 6, the syndicate's attorney, Charles A. Adamek, also contacted Google about the "blatant misappropriation of Dr. Sowell's identity." Adamek received a similar "canned" response.
Then Adamek mailed yet another letter on Aug. 12.
Finally, Aug. 13 and 14 e-mails from "The Blogger Team" at Google indicated that the company may finally be looking into the problem. But the piece attributed to Sowell remains on the blog as of this afternoon -- Aug. 15.
A Google spokesperson could not be immediately reached for comment today by E&P.
"Google is a wonderful company that does so many things right," said Newcombe. "But they need a better system for taking down impersonators as soon as they are alerted to the problem. Leaving it up for 11 days [since Creators' first letter of Aug. 4] while shielding the blogger shows that Google's current system for correcting this problem is woefully inadequate."
Indeed, Newcombe said Blogger's "terms of service" includes this clause: "We do not allow impersonation of others through our services in a manner that is intended to or does mislead or confuse others."
Newcombe added that "The Right Scale" blog also runs other Creators columnists (including Pat Buchanan, Larry Elder, Suzanne Fields, Lawrence Kudlow, David Limbaugh, Ben Shapiro, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., and Walter Williams) as well as other distributors' columnists (including Gail Collins and Maureen Dowd of the New York Times News Service, Ann Coulter of Universal Press Syndicate, Victor Davis Hanson of Tribune Media Services, and Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post Writers Group.
"Either the blogger is stealing the work of these writers or, as in the case of Thomas Sowell, he's writing his own columns and putting their bylines on them," said Newcombe, adding that he has notified the other syndicates and news services.
Newcombe said Creators would consider legal action if the Sowell "impersonation" isn't taken down. "If someone can get away with this with one writer," he added, "then anyone could get away with this with any writer."
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