We have catalogued several recent instances of what we call "inadvertent plagiarism." This occures when a reporter "accidentally," "mistakenly," or "inadvertantly" "copies," "duplicates," or "fails to attribute" the work of another writer. Inadvertent plagiarism, as explained by several large North American newspapers, can often apply to entire paragraphs. It happened at the Montreal Gazette last summer, and at the New York Times and Baltimore Sun in December. It happened at the Toronto Star earlier this year when it plagiarized while lifting a 10-year old news item (the paper said it "should have credited
Randy Cassingham’s This is
True web site and should have
indicated quotes from his story.") While we’re at it, the Rocky Mountain News last year dismissed its deputy editorial page editor after he "inappropriately duplicated wording from a Washington Post article."
Anything to avoid calling it straight-up plagiarism.
As we have noted before, this is a lame way to explain away plagiarism. The growing frequency of this excuse is disturbing, especially when most papers decline to investigate the prior work of the reporter. Accidents do happen, but readers are rarely offered any explanation as to how the paper confirmed that the incident was a one-time, "inadvertent" offense. This lack of transparency breeds suspicion.
We can now add another instance of accidental/inadvertent plagiarism to the growing list. A Globe And Mail story about Iran’s president copied liberally from a story in The New Republic. Robert Alterman’s blog, My Conservative Dreamworld, noted the similarities between the two stories after TNR’s piece was reprinted in Canada’s other national newspaper, the National Post. Then, two days later (yesterday), the Globe ran this "clarification" (but didn’t place it on its online corrections page):
A profile of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that appeared in last Saturday’s Focus
section referred to a story about the Iranian President in the current
issue of The New Republic. After an investigation by The Globe and
Mail, it appears that notes by the author were mistakenly inserted into
the story without proper attribution. The Globe has apologized to The
New Republic and regrets the error.
Here’s the problem: Alterman’s post points out six different nearly identical sections of the Globe and TNR articles, some of which are quite long. How can the Globe possibly excuse this instance plagiarism as a case of "notes by the author…mistakenly inserted into the story…"? We’ve raised this question in the previous instances of inadvertent plagiarism, but, honestly, how can any writer mistake several passages of someone else’s writing for their own?
The other disturbing element to this case is that the Globe appears to have taken no disciplinary action, nor has it deemed this worthy of an apology or editor’s note. Strangely, the Globe saw the need to apologize to TNR, but not to its own readers. And it didn’t place the "clarification" on its online corrections page.
Compare this with how the Montreal Gazette handled its case of inadvertent plagiarism. The columnist personally apologized to readers and the paper yanked her column for "several" weeks. There were still things to be desired about the paper’s handling of the incident — she was "formally reprimanded," though readers had to guess what that meant, and she might have continued to sit on the paper’s editorial board during her column’s hiatus — but it puts the Globe to shame.
A more detailed explanation of the Globe’s investigation could help allay concerns about previous offenses and the nature of the "mistaken" plagiarism. A formal apology to readers would also be appropriate.
