Do you have a favorite morning radio show that you listen to on the way to work? Do you often find yourself in awe of the sheer magnitude of talent that it must take to come up with hours worth of hilarious material everyday? Well, things most likely aren’t as they seem.

I recently wrote an article for Cracked.com called “Nectar of the Broke: The World’s Worst Ways To Get Drunk.” Not to toot my own horn, but after I finished it, I thought it was pretty damn funny. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who was impressed. The day after the article ran, a thread called “Cracked on the radio” appeared on the Cracked forum. In the thread, a Cracked reader from Baltimore described hearing my article, which had just run on Cracked the day before, being read word for word by the on air “talent” of the Kirk and Mark Show on Baltimore’s 105.7 FM.

This would all be very flattering if not for one thing. They didn’t even acknowledge that the article came from Cracked.com. In other words, I had been jacked. The article that I put hours upon hours into researching and writing was retitled “Ghetto Wines” and presented as original material by a major radio station. College types refer to this as plagiarism. Typically, when you use material taken from another source, you give credit. For example, in that very article, I used some information that I found on a website called Bumwine.com. Not only did I explain that I got the information from that site, I even included a friendly link to that site so readers could go read the other funny stuff to be found there. It’s a matter of common courtesy. The information I used was very brief and can be found in other places, so I could’ve just as easily not even mentioned where it came from. But then, I’d be kind of a jerk wouldn’t I?

Speaking of doing the right thing, I figured that, having not actually heard the alleged incident myself, I should at least give the people behind the Kirk and Mark Show a chance to explain before writing a huge article about it. So I sent an email. I asked them to please explain why I was hearing that my article had been read live on the air and passed off as their own. The reply I received spoke volumes. I didn’t receive a reply at all. As a writer, being called a plagiarist is about the worst thing that can happen. If someone emailed me and accused me of that, I’d reply. Unless, of course, I really did plagiarize something and didn’t have any way to explain myself. In that case, silence may be in order.

So is this conclusive proof that Kirk and Mark stole the article and read it on the air? It certainly doesn’t look good. It’s a radio station, it’s not like they can’t clear the air. There has to be a recording of the segment. Post it on the show website and let people judge for themselves. But it looks like that isn’t going to happen. Draw your own conclusions.

With that said, it’s not a given that Kirk and Mark are thieving plagiarists. They could just be talentless hacks without the motivation or ability to create compelling radio content on a daily basis. As it turns out, this type of thing probably isn’t all that rare. In fact, mine isn’t even the first Cracked article that has been used live on the air without any credit given to the original source. So how does this happen? Enter the radio show comedy provider. In a sad development in radio entertainment, some stations now subscribe to content providers who basically search the web for funny material, clean it up for FCC purposes, and send it out to those stations that subscribe for use on the air. Don’t believe me? Check out this website. The third bullet point says it all. “Show prep featuring original humor PLUS the best of the web.” The best of the web. That’s us. That’s Cracked. That’s countless other blogs and websites that often operate for no money at all only to have the stuff they write used to generate ad revenue for radio stations across the country and receiving no compensation whatsoever. Not even an acknowledgment as to where the content came from.

So, did Kirk and Mark consciously steal a Cracked article and read it on the air pretending that it was their own, or did they just read what their content provider sent them? I can’t tell you for sure either way. But no matter what the case may be, it’s a damn travesty.