Friday, 13 May 2016

One would think even a 34 year-old Liberal Party candidate in this year's federal election would realise that the Internet means you cannot blatantly copy without attribution


BuzzFeed politically impaled a very foolish federal election candidate on 5 May 2016:

Meet the Liberal National party’s candidate for the federal seat of Brisbane, 34-year-old Trevor Evans.

Evans, who is the current CEO of the National Retail Association, was pre-selected last month to run for the Liberal National party in the hope he’ll replace retiring LNP MP, Teresa Gambaro.....

If people want to find out more about Trevor Evans they could go to his website and learn all about his history working with the Salvation Army and time as chief of staff to now immigration minister Peter Dutton.

Except one passage really jumps out. It’s about his early years “growing up without much” and family who “instilled the values that helped him become the person his is today [sic].”
The passage stands out mostly because Trevor suddenly becomes “Tim”.

BuzzFeed News googled the passage and found the website of fake US congressman, Tim Hawthorne, which has been set up by a digital design agency to advertise its products.


BuzzFeed News contacted Evans about the copy-and-paste situation with his biographical information.

“We are using a template - It’s not front facing and full website will be live in a few days,” Evans said over Twitter direct message.

Minutes later the website’s “About Trevor Evans” section was taken down.

Well spotted, Buzzfeed!

UPDATE

A vastly different "About Trevor Evans" has reappeared and it now opens thus:

[Accessed 7.25am 13 May 2016 at https://lnp.org.au/trevor-evans/]


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