As noted in this year’s edition of the Crunks, 2008 saw an example of institutional plagiarism (the Bulletin), as well as an incident of institutional fabrication (Mainichi Daily News). Both are mentioned below, along with the rest of this year’s notable examples of plagiarism and fabrication. On the more positive side of things, this year saw John McIntyre of the Baltimore Sun write a great guide to spotting a plagiarist or fabulist. It’s highly recommended. And now, on with the bad news. (Also, please email me if I missed any.)
January
The Weekly Standard apologized after it discovered that a December 2007 article by David Satter included several passages from articles published in the Eurasia Daily Monitor. Link
The Sunday Times (UK) “inadvertently” plagiarized content from Radar magazine. Link
The new sex columnist for the New York Press resigned after her first column included questions taken from Dan Savage’s syndicated sex column. Link
February
After work submitted by a contributor was found to have included plagiarized material, the Brown Daily Herald conducted a review and discovered “two [additional] articles … that contained passages similar or identical to those in other publications.” Link
An article in the Miami Herald contained passages taken from an article in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Link
The New York Times published an Editors’ Note that revealed a paragraph contained in a front page article about Argentina was taken from the Miami Herald. Slate’s Jack Shafer discovered the theft. Link
The Ventura County Star fired its surfing columnist after it discovered that two of his columns contained plagiarized material. Link
Award-winning photographer Liu Wei-qiang admitted to faking a widely-published photograph that showed a herd of endangered Tibetan antelopes near a passing train on the controversial Qinghai-Tibet railway. Link
March
Timothy S. Goeglein, a White House aide responsible for working with conservative and Christian groups, was revealed to have repeatedly plagiarized in his guest column for the News-Sentinel. Link
The same New York Times writer that plagiarized in a February front page article was once again caught plagiarizing. Link
The New York Times published an Editors’ Note after an article included passages from a story published on City Hall, a website. Link
The Sunday News published an op-ed by a member of the community that turned out to have been largely plagiarized from work by a professor at Cornell University. Link
From a New York Times Editors’ Note: “The Books of The Times review in The Arts on Feb. 26 and an article in House & Home on Thursday described the experiences of Margaret B. Jones, who said that she had been a foster child and gang member in South Central Los Angeles and survived to write a book about that life. “Margaret B. Jones” turned out to be a pseudonym, and her story a complete fabrication, as The Times reported on Tuesday.” Link
German newspaper Der Spiegel issued a retraction for an article that claimed IKEA had a habit of naming inexpensive items after Danish towns. (High end items were named after Swedish, Finnish and Norwegian towns.) The story was based on a report in Nyhedsavisen, a Danish newspaper, that turned out to have been fabricated. Link
April
An Ottawa Citizen editor’s note admitted the paper published quotes that had been “incorrectly attributed” to an expert at the Brookings Institution, and that the quotes “do not reflect his actual views.” The note did not explain the origin of the quotes, or how they ended up in the paper. Were the quotes fabricated? Plagiarized from another source? We’ll never know. Link
May
As was the case last year, a winning poem in the Washington Post’s kids poetry contest turned out to have been plagiarized. Link
Because of an example of photographic plagiarism, CablePulse24* was ordered by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council to air a statement admitting it breached broadcast standards. Link
A freelance art critic whose work had appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The Stranger was exposed as a plagiarist. Link
June
The Vancouver Province canceled the column of a radio personality after it was revealed he had plagiarized from a Sports Illustrated column by Rick Reilly. Link
A contributor to Web Worker Daily was fired after he stole a post from MakeUseOf.com. Link
July
A sports writer for the The Daily Herald plagiarized from a column by, yup, Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated. Link
For many years, the Mainichi Daily News, the English website of Japanese newspaper Mainichi Shimbun, was the place to go if you wanted to read unbelievably salacious articles about the sexual habits of the Japanese. This year, the site admitted many of its stories had been made up. After an internal investigation, the paper issued an apology and announced that the website would “start over again.” Link
August
In the worst case of plagiarism in recent memory, Slate writer Jody Rosen revealed that the Bulletin, a weekly paper in Texas, was regularly plagiarizing from a variety of other media sources. After Rosen’s article was published, the Bulletin was shut down. Link
September, October, November
None!
December
Rogers Sportsnet, a sports channel and website in Canada, fired NFL columnist and on air commentator Chris Landry after it was discovered he had repeatedly plagiarized from columns by Mike Lombardi and Andrew Brandt of NationalFootballPost.com. Link
*Correction October 23, 2009: The correct name of the station is CablePulse24. This article incorrectly referred to it as CablePlus24. Thanks, Emily!
