SpiceJet plagiarism: Twitter apology
By Techgirl

Low cost airline SpiceJet inflight magazine ‘SpiceRoute’ promotes the carrier, its travel destinations and everything its customers would be interested in.  Unfortunately for SpiceJet,  its Aug, 2009 issue has an article ‘What’s in Your Khomcha?’ which has been plagiarized from material published by popular Delhi blog and Orkut community Eating Out In Delhi (aka EOID).

And now this plagiarism by chef and author, Hirak Gautam, is making waves in the Indian online world.

Food forum Eating Out In Delhi (EOID) was started by Hemanshu Kumar who lecturers at the Delhi School of Economics. It is popular and has been profiled by national media like Hindustan Times and India Today.  So, it was just a question of time before material plagiarized from this foodie blog would be detected.

On August 19, EOID founder Hemanshu Kumar blogged about how the SpiceJet magazine had published content from his site without any attribution. Within 24 hours, it is been reported in national blogs like Desipundit.

Normally, when someone is caught plagiarizing, he/she are best advised to stand up and publicly apologize for the mistake.  A sincere apology and an attempt to make amends will pacify most people.

But Hirak Gautam who wrote the article for the SpiceJet magazine (with unattributed help from EOID) wanted to kill two birds with one stone.  He first set up a brand new account on micro blogging tool Twitter and then twittered an apology to EOID.

“
@hemanshukumar Hey! Didn’t mean to plagiarize. Ws rning on a ddline n jst usd ur blg as a bkgrnd rscrch material. Sry if I offended u.Peace!
”

Obviously, a Twitter apology was not sufficient.  The magazine publisher Prakash Johari of Maxposure Media Group has emailed in offering “our sincere apologies to all who we have offended inadvertently. The article was contributed by a freelance writer, who is a chef with a hotel in Delhi. We are in touch with him and we assure you that strict action will be taken on this issue.”

I think the Twitter apology harmed him more than helped in making amends.  What do you think?

Techgoss note: Techgirl is a senior Tech journalist who reports on the IT, KPO and KPO Sectors for a leading media house.  In her spare time, she dabbles in satire in her blog http://techgirltalk.blogspot.com