Same feeds included on 4 sites - is that duplicate content?

[jonnno]

We have 4 directory websites each with their own daily newsfeeds. Since we have journalists typing away we provide a national news feed too and since it's there and technically free, we put it on all of our directories.

Will this count as duplicate content? The text of the story would be the same on each website but the websites themselves are different (although all styled the same).

[tedster]

Since we have journalists typing away we provide a national news feed too

If you have significant unique content on the same page as the feed, you should be OK. If the feed content is on a dedicated page with nothing else, then that URL would most likely get filtered out of search results. This would not be a "penalty" against your site, but a simple filter to make sure searchers don't get many copies of the exact same information in their search results.