Blood-suckers Bite Murdoch

*Disclaimer - For anyone who dislikes the use of extended metaphors, I apologise in advance.

Having conquered cinema, fiction and television, vampires have turned their attentions the world of journalism. But this is not a Twilight-esque tale of teenage angst in small town America. No, the mythical beings, which exist by feeding on the blood of living creatures, have infiltrated our traditional media in the form of a new breed of publishers.

Is this part of a global conspiracy by the undead to control our communication channels? Not quite. The technological advances of the 21st century have created a number of news providers that exist with the sole purpose of repackaging existing stories. These range from aggregators to self-titled 'news agencies' that have no intention of sniffing-out original leads or angles themselves.

On Monday (December 2nd), Rupert Murdoch, Managing Director of News International, said that he will place his news sites behind a pay wall -- removing all partnerships with 'vampire' aggregators, as he considers this a form of theft. I maintain, however, that this may have more to do with the contractual legalities of his existing pact with the Devil.

Following the Dirty Digger's comments, Arianna Huffington, founder and editor of the The Huffington Post -- a half-human, half-vampire news provider offering both repackaged and original content, think Wesley Snipes' day-walker character in Blade -- yesterday made a passionate rebuke.

Offering a more nuanced view, the online news innovator suggested that Rupert -- yes we are on first name terms -- has confused aggregation with wholesale misappropriation.

She said: "Be careful what you wish for because as soon as you … start denying your content to other sites that aggregate and link back to the original source, you stand to lose a large part of your traffic overnight."

Unfortunately, having seen the way these organisations work from the inside, I have to agree with Rupert -- not a sentence I ever imagined writing. The majority of these vampires do not exist to inform and entertain their audience. Instead, they are looking for potential consumer markets to feed upon.

The credibility of the internet as a news source is being destroyed by a percentage of these organisations. If they are left to scavenge upon the remaining remnants of our media landscape, forever replicating the same sources over and over again, journalism will lose the one attribute that vampires hold so dear - immortality.