Back in April of 2018 I wrote a short article for the 32nd Anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster titled “The Chernobyl Disaster – Calls To The Pripyat Fire Dispatch.” It was a simple article where I shared a video I had found by the same title which had audio recordings of calls made to firefighting forces during the disaster. Perhaps it would have been more properly titled with “Chernobyl fire dispatch” I can’t say — I just went with what the video I had found was titled.
It was a “sleeper” article during the past year until recently, starting in May and moving on into June or so. When HBO’s Chernobyl series premiered, the article began to gain quite a bit of traction. Now, this is always good — it means more people are finding my site, can check out other articles I’ve written, and can learn from what I’ve written. The problem was very few people were checking out the other Chernobyl articles, just that one.
In fact, it was so heavily trending that it actually began to annoy me. I grew to hate that I had written the article and considered removing it, but I didn’t. I accepted that this was just the nature of people’s interest and I went on about my article writing, checking on the original entry to ensure the video was still up, and added an edit where I acknowledged the attention the article was getting and implored readers to check out the other content I had written on the subject.
One day I checked the article, and the video was gone! I was surprised and figured maybe the original uploader had gotten annoyed with the attention the video, presumably, would have gotten and removed it. I took the time to find some replacement videos and link to them, while adding what I thought had happened to the original to the text.
Move ahead to last night, I decide to check my website email. I do this every few days, just in case, and last night something caught my attention: An email titled “RE: Calls To The Pripyat Fire Dispatch” from one “Andriy Pryymachenko.”
Naturally, I opened the email, incredibly curious as to what had been sent my way. I wasn’t expecting what I read:
Dear Chris,
I just read your article about the first dispatch call right after the Chornobyl catastrophe.
The original visualization that you mention in your post is made by me. Unfortunately HBO recreated it without even asking my permission. Here’s a short video about the situation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ro7HLFpdC2Q
Even though the plagiarism is obvious, HBO’s lawyers deny it.
If you have any questions, I’ll be happy to answer them.
Andriy
I was amazed. Naturally your first thoughts are “wait, is this real?” Well, let’s think about it — this is an email address that’s perfectly normal, contains a spelling of “Chernobyl” which is a very common alternative used, and it contains a link to a video which talks about the situation. Alright, things are looking on the up and up, and I don’t see why someone would lie about this, so, I checked out the video.
Now, let’s be clear that I’ve yet to watch the Chernobyl program. I kind of wish I had, as things would have made a lot more sense when I would see the first episode.
So, we have another person who was a bit mistaken on the origin of the footage who compared it to HBO’s Chernobyl programs re-creation of the events.
A re-creation that I didn’t know existed in the show. Now, I had always figured that maybe the audio was used, or that somehow the scene was re-created for the show and my article was picking up traction due to it.
I never realized that the video I was sharing was actually an edited re-upload of another person’s work from 2013 which was apparently copied by HBO for the Chernobyl television series!
This was kind of incredible to me. Not just that the event had happened, but that the creator of the original video had taken the time to contact me about all this and, most of all, how clearly it appears that the shows creators, at the very least, were “inspired” by Andriy’s work. It’s open and shut, as they say, if you ask me, but I’m not here to claim anything or judge anyone. Not yet, anyway. Of course, HBO and the show’s production company deny this.
I would get in touch with Andriy on twitter, after replying to his email and watching the video. He and I, since last night, have been in discussion on this topic and I will be sharing more in depth details on this soon.
This leads to one last thing — the removal of the video I had originally shared, and other copies I found and also shared which had been taken down. I asked Andriy about these, if it was him or HBO, to which he replied:
This I believe are my actions only. I want to fix the situation somehow. But if the author of these videos contact me, I let them use my video. The only thing I ask them to credit me and put a link to original
Completely understandable. I had never seen his original upload until all this was brought to my attention (partially because the original video title is in Ukrainian) but having seen it after the fact it is indeed the same video I had originally shared a copy of and quite enjoyed. Following this ordeal it is natural that Andriy would want to at least be credited for the video, as it is his creative work.
In talking with him he has been nothing but nice to me, very friendly and appreciative of not only me originally sharing the video (even if it wasn’t his upload in particular) but the fact that I care about the plagiarism concerns which have been presented.
It’s all just kind of amazing, but goes to show what can happen when you write even the most otherwise simple of articles. I thought nothing of the video or article when I wrote it — I wanted to simply share audio records of a major event in history and the human aspect of it.
Now, I’ve spent the past night in chats with Andriy learning more about this situation and planning to write a detailed article on this soon enough.
More to come, as always, and if you haven’t seen that original video yet, well, here you go!