Two days ago - we aired a story about what we called "The Boots Challenge" - urging politicians to show us their bank accounts as they had promised. Â
The story was meant as both satire and commentary - and we know that with the portability of social media it has made its rounds on the internet. But the UDP took it to another level when they just straight up stole an entire portion of the story and used it as a political ads.
Now, we know both PUP and UDP have been ripping parts of 7News for their political smear campaigns for decades now without attribution, payment or even asking "low me noh?"
But, this one - which took our editor's creative twist and turned it into a political harpoon really took it to another level. We asked the UDP to take it down today and they haven't. And that's why Jules Vasquez is sounding off tonight:
Jules Vasquez - News Director, 7News
“Yeah, I think it’s really sick. I think it shows a real spiritual sickness in the UDP. That somebody is creative and it’s our people here who, we just chose to do something creatively for the entertainment and edification of our viewers and they take it and they pervert it. So, they have no respect for artistic integrity, nor respect for creativity, nor respect for journalistic integrity. It’s just really vulture behaviour and it’s really just lowest common denominator in just rob and grab. It’s sick and it’s indicative of a very sick culture and I have asked them to desist and remove from our platforms but I suspect they will not. So, we’ll make it clear that we’re not into that. Yes, historically media clips have been used to ads, but man, they are actually taking the soul of something and just trying to repurpose it for their own very deviant and self-serving ends. You know, you had aspiration to do something nice and you think you do something nice, but they just turned it into a bucket of faeces.
Despite a firm takedown request, the offending ad remains on the UDP facebook page at this hour.
