"I said it, Mr Blatter, not Kulula."

The offending Kulula ad which was pulled after FIFA forced it to be withdrawn. Pic via Marklives.com.click to enlarge

How it happened

And here is how it happened. On Tuesday, 12 March 2010, @Kulula tweeted “oh dear letter from FIFA's lawyers says we broke their trademark of the use of “South Africa” and think our non-WC ad was about soccer...”

Both my blog MarkLives.com and South African creative industry showcase blog 10and5.com picked up the ad and the fact that it had been forced to be withdrawn. Some quick investigating showed that the humourless lawyers FIFA employs also not only had issues with Kulula using a country name - it had issues with the use of soccer balls and even the image of a stadium in the advertising. The use of our national flag was (excuse the pun) also flagged.

Short editorial

On my blog I wrote a short editorial quoting the @kulula tweet and adding; “It is absolutely outrageous. We have signed over our country, its symbols and our economy to one ‘Sepp' Blatter. Nasty.”

A number of blogs picked up on the story [and Bizcommunity referenced it; see here and here - managing editor]but it wasn't until the ever-influential Arthur Goldstuck tweeted the story yesterday, Thursday 18 March, from his Twitter account @art2gee that interest started to grow (#FIFAdiots became quite popular!), including from a reporter in the Independent Newspapers stable.

Misread story completely

Instead of tracking down the original tweet from @kulula, the reporter sourced some of her content from MarkLives.com and, in doing so, misread the story completely. So what was a tweet from Kulula.com and an editorial comment on MarkLives.com became “The airline broke the news on Twitter yesterday, saying: “Oh dear, letter from Fifa's lawyers says we broke their trademark of the use of 'South Africa' and think our non-WC ad was about soccer... even the use of our national flag was an issue. It is absolutely outrageous. We have signed over our country, its symbols and our economy to one Sepp Blatter. Nasty.”

Wrong date. Check.
Misquote. Check.
No credit to source. Check.

Didn't trace original quote either

SAPA didn't bother to trace the original quote either and simply lifted copy from The Star for its story. The misquote stood. For a while. Thanks to some tweets via @marklives to the relevant media, IOL and its stable mates quickly corrected the quote and inserted a credit. Others simply re-edited the quote to remove my offending commentary. Which is great - except nobody actually published a correction or stated that the stories in question had been edited after publication.

Surely readers deserve to know that what they read 10 minutes ago and what they are reading now contains a significant correction. Online media has to fight extra hard to maintain its credibility. If it doesn't, we really will kill the goose that lays the eggs (even if they are no longer quite golden).

For more:

• Marklives: The Mercury, IOL quotes MarkLives, forgets to credit us