Media blunders... more like MY blunders

Some follow-up from a February 2 post

As revealed in the comments section of that post, I missed something rather obvious. An anonymous poster pointed out that the London Free Press story and the CP story are one in the same. You can read the full CP story here. You'd think the paragraphs that are the exact same in both articles would have tipped me off. It was very Friday yesterday.

In any case, this makes my specific questions on media ownership moot. The Metro often condenses agency and Toronto Star stories down to one or two paragraphs to fit them into their smaller format, which the Free Press didn't need to do in its online format. I suppose we could question their choice of running the story at all (it doesn't really have anything to do with London and, from what I could tell, wasn't a huge national story), but that seems a little too cynical to me.

There are, however, numerous instances of media brands reporting in a way that attacks their rivals' credibility. The executive VP of the CBC, Richard Stursberg, certainly thinks his brand is unfairly targetted (you must agree to the Terms of Service to view the article).

I can remember a handful of conversations with journalism profs about this topic (I graduated last year), though I've forgotten the details. (Small digresseion: if anyone has information on the origins of CBCWatch.ca I'd be much obliged.)

Can anyone suggest other examples of news brand rivalries? Or, on the other side of the coin, examples of media brands collaborating?