I'm rather stunned that I have to do this.

Yesterday afternoon part of my Ticker on the "Cash For Clunkers" was apparently replicated, almost word-for-word, in the "subscriber only" area of a very prominent national talk show.  A serious part of it was also nearly word-for-word read on the air.  This was brought to my attention almost immediately by people commenting on the forum, and confirmed by multiple people who claim to have heard it "on air."

I have personally verified this; while the original source for my Ticker (which I cited and linked) was linked the majority of the commentary he quoted didn't come from that story.  Specifically, my commentary about how sales tax on new vehicles sales is computed.  Those sounded like "golden" original words - they weren't.

The Market Ticker has always has a very liberal republication and citation policy.  Provided that material is not taken out of context and proper credit is given to the source any online media outlet is free to use The Market Ticker's content - this is explicitly stated on the right sidebar of every page.  I request that other-than-online (print, radio, TV, etc) media request permission using the link provided for other uses - permission that I routinely grant, provided of course that attribution is given.

It is plagiarism and unseemly at best to attempt to co-opt another's work as your own without credit.

I am flattered that one of the bastions of Conservative Talk Radio apparently has The Market Ticker on his (or his staff's) personal RSS feed, seeing as the comment was made on-air just a short time after it was posted.

Nonetheless, journalistic integrity demands that when you're going to use something that another person has written wholesale (or so nearly so as to be linguistically indistinguishable) you attribute where you got it from.

If this was an honest error, then a correction is in order and would be appreciated.  I certainly understand that people get busy and make inadvertent mistakes - we have all erred, either in omission or commission, at some point in time, myself included.

While I'm on the topic of conservative talk radio may I ask why these very same commentators have not bothered to take up the cause of the rampant and outrageous fraud in our financial system and pin that tail on both political parties along with the banksters - where it most assuredly does belong?

Perhaps both lapses of judgment can be rectified going forward and we can see the alleged conservatives on talk radio live up to the billing.

It would be a welcome change.