Freedom of the Press?

A criticism from Chris Moyles started me thinking today. He was lamenting the fact that journalist, Mark Jeffries from the Mirror had effectively paraphrased his "exclusive" interview with Sharon Osbourne that had aired yesterday morning. I had also listened to this (after hating Moyles for sometime, his strange allure of arrogance and ego has won me over)and as the team went through soundbites of Jeffries' story, it certainly did seem as though he had lifted her words and created his article around Chris' scoop.
The roly poly(ha) DJ's bugbear was the fact that The Mirror had neglected to credit Radio 1 at all within the article whereas other papers had run the story but made sure that they mentioned his impromptu interview. Comedy Dave also drew attention to the hypocrisy surrounding the incident: when they have debated a story and neglected to include their source, newspapers have been known to get quite irrate.
I can certainly see their point but if we expand this argument, I think the eventual conundrum becomes obvious: who owns news? I am approaching this query from an entriely ideological perspective rather than considering it from a legal point of view. Once you share news, do you cease to have sole ownership of it? Once in the public form, is it essentially a free for all?
How many times have you had a particuarly witty anecdote told to you, pocketed it and recycled it at an opportune moment? Everyone is "guilty" of this crime and if you are not then you either need to listen more carefully to your friends or find some new ones with something interesting to say. When you seize your limelight, I imagine that in order to do the news justice, you probably doctor it a little, personalise it so that your audience laugh indulgently in a "that is so typical you!" manner. Through editing the information, it's also possible to convince ourselves that plagiarism hasn't occurred, the humorous acquaintance has merely inspired creativity.
So we all do it in a microcosmic sense but let's return to the big picture. News eventually turns into history. Interesting to decide when this transition happens- is it a day after, as we chuck the papers away? Or do we have to wait 50 years to really judge an event outside of its own context? My point here is that if we accept that whoever discovers the news first has ownership and needs to be referenced, does their copywright have a sell by date? Ideally, I imagine that a capable historian always investigates the primary source and then makes their own intepretation. Perhaps that what Jeffries should have done.