When Cultural News reviewed the popular podcast Swedish Murder Stories, and their newly published book of the same name, we could conclude that both contained extensive plagiarism of Swedish news media and blogs. Our review of the sister pod Svenska Rån showed the same.
- It's been wrong, that's the human factor. I would like to apologize very much, Swedish murder story creator Sebastian Krantz told SVT then.
Now, Culture News can reveal that a total of four popular podcasts from Dabozzi Media and podcast creator Sebastian Krantz have repeatedly plagiarized news sites and blogs, and that this has been going on for years. It's about Swedish Murder Stories, Swedish Robbery, Ufopodden and the podcast Haunted. (In the fact box below you can read more about this).
When we contact Sebastian Krantz with the new information, he again admits that there was a mistake:
- We have been very poor at doing a control of the script. It's just to admit, he says to the Culture News.
Krantz says that about ten different screenwriters were hired for their podcasts, and that their sources were not checked.
- We have hardly had any routines at all, and have been far too blind for such things here. It is clearly our responsibility, he continues.
Have known about the plagiarismIn addition to several examples of plagiarism, the Cultural News can now show that Dabozzi Media and distributor Bauer Media have also known that plagiarism has existed for several years. Regularly erased and edited sections that have been wrongly erased, but despite this, copyright infringement has continued. At the same time, Bauer Media has continued to sell and place ads in the pod.
Already in the spring of 2017, the association Ufo-Sweden contacted Sebastian Krantz regarding plagiarism of the association's blogs in sections of Ufopodden and Haemsökt, and sent an invoice of SEK 5000 for copyright infringement.
It was never paid, but when the sections in question were deleted from Bauer Media's podcast platform Radioplay, Ufo-Sweden released the conflict. In an e-mail between the parties, Sebastian Krantz apologizes, saying that this is a misunderstanding. But Clas Svahn, vice president of Ufo-Sweden and journalist at Dagens Nyheter, does not provide much for that explanation.
- He has turned around a lot from both blog posts I wrote and my books on Ufon. I've had contact with him in writing, and that he calls it a misunderstanding and now apologizes is one of the most ridiculous I've read, says Clas Svahn.
- It's no mistake, these podcasts are based on the fact that he has turned things around. We have been to him lots of times, so he has been well aware of this for a long time.
"Should have acted earlier"A year later, in the spring of 2018, Dabozzi media even published an apology on Facebook for plagiarizing the site Dystopia in four episodes of the podcast Haunted and in one section of Swedish Murder Stories.
"In these cases, technical problems and the human factor are behind," one writes in the unsigned post, explaining that the sections will be edited and re-uploaded.
We ask Sebastian Krantz how plagiarism may have continued, when several times since the start erased section due to plagiarism, and promised improvement.
- I actually have no good answer to that, says Sebastian Krantz.
- When we have been informed of errors we have taken action, but since then we have been bad at learning from it. I should definitely have taken sharper action much sooner.
Read Bauer Media's answer here.