Does this mean the end of Al Franken's Senate dreams?

[Gutenberg]

NBC is known to do that sort of thing. They took a story of mine without permission, used it as the spine of an episode of "Homicide: Life on the Street," and nearly got me sued. I seriously believe that with NBC involved, Franken could have said "Hello! Nice day" and NBC would have claimed he wrote the sketch.

[Lux Interior]

$tevie wrote:
Anyhow, this is a state that elected a professional wrestler with the nickname "The Body" to be governor.

The man is a god damned sexual Tyrannosaurus!

[mikeylikesit]

Gutenberg wrote:
NBC is known to do that sort of thing. They took a story of mine without permission, used it as the spine of an episode of "Homicide: Life on the Street," and nearly got me sued. I seriously believe that with NBC involved, Franken could have said "Hello! Nice day" and NBC would have claimed he wrote the sketch.

Intriguing, tell us more.

[Gutenberg]

I wrote a story about a murder that had remained unsolved for 20 years. The guilty man committed suicide and left a note. The whole situation was very sad--the murder erupted from a bar fight, but in the intervening years the guilty man had reformed himself, sobered up, married and held down a city job.

Things did not work out so well for the victim's family but everyone survived.

I told the story from the point of view of both widows. The head writer for "Homicide" was down at police headquarters looking for some ideas and one of the captains said, you want a story, you should read this one. So the head writer called me. I refused them permission to use the story--it is copyrighted--but the guy said they twist their stories so the source is unrecognizable. Well, they didn't, they ridiculed the widow of the guilty man, who was a very sweet, very ill woman, and she wanted to sue. I don't blame her. Her attorney called me and I went down and talked to him and explained what had happened. Thank God the attorney was a decent man and he did not sue me.

You work these stories by building trust between yourself and the subjects of the story. The only thing a reporter has is his integrity and trustworthiness. Lose those and you are done. This woman thought I had sold her out and I felt terrible about what happened to her. I don't blame her for hating me after that.

[mikeylikesit]

So basically they stole your copyrighted story and used it without compensation or credit and in the process harmed your professional reputation. You had no recourse available or elected to not pursue them?

[Gutenberg]

You try suing NBC.

[mikeylikesit]

Might be as hard as suing General Electric. I get it.