In addition to copying the code, they left some original asset urls in there as well. Which means that those come out of our bandwidth bill. So yeah ... we're a little mad. Not terribly so, though. Life's too short.
You absolutely should have included that detail in your article. It completely changes the story and it's highly unethical to exclude it.
It's still wrong for Al Jazeera to use your code without licensing it, but you need to let your readers have all the facts. Without that detail, I was rather curious why de volkskrant wasn't also upset.
At no point in his blog post was it even implied that the content was stolen, only the frontend code which appears to be generated by their proprietary frontend tool.
I don't think the blog post does anything unethical to not clarify this further as it seems fairly obvious the contention is about the code copyright and hotlinking.
I mean, with a sentence like this, it's hard not to jump to the conclusion that there's more than hotlinking and code copyright going on: "We know you love us Al-Jazeera, but stealing from us and then ignoring us is not the way to express it."
I wouldn't call them unethical, just incomplete. We have a case here where someone paid Scrollytellio to create a story in their content-management system. Their system is such that, to a layperson (which I assume the reporter is when it comes to webdev), the code and presentation is inextricable from the content.
The reporter was wrong, but that's just one level of confusion and ambiguity where it's possible to understand why AJ messed up. Even more confusing is that AJ itself uses the same open-source tech that ScrollyTelling does:
A web dev/producer at a media company not knowing the difference between the open-source code they've used in the past, and the modified version that a freelancer has given to them for this one package? Yeah, incompetent, but not malicious.
Again, it doesn't excuse AJ, their web producer, and the reporter, for not following up with more speed. But I can see why it's more likely that incompetency is the culprit and not malice.
But your post makes it look like AJ just came and ripped it off, whereas the original journalist was just selling it around and you knew it. That's really poor form. By all means publicize it if you think you're in the right, but don't "selectively report" facts on the ground. For a company working with journalists, I'd expect more integrity.
You must demand integrity from journalists; it doesn't mean you will get it, but you certainly should have expectations of decent moral fortitude, and complain loudly if that doesn't happen.
There are journalists fighting the good fight all over the world (Greenwald etc). They shouldn't be demeaned just because they have colleagues like Judith Miller.
Of course you have every right to fight for the fruits of your own labor. Good for you for publicly standing up against a thief, we'll see if Al Jazeera has any journalistic integrity - wouldn't bet on it. Scummy organization run by amateurs.
In addition to copying the code, they left some original asset urls in there as well. Which means that those come out of our bandwidth bill. So yeah ... we're a little mad. Not terribly so, though. Life's too short.