Regret the Error

From a letter to the editor sent to the Tuscaloosa News:

On 28 January 2009, the Greene County Independent published an editorial with the by line of Representative Artis McCampbell titled, “It is time for action to boost the economy”. On 29 January 2009, The Tuscaloosa News published “My Turn / Chris England” with the title, “Alabama’s economy will get better”.One of the letters is plagiarized. With the exception of the titles, they are identical, word for word. Now maybe I am naive, but ethics dictate that any article published with an attributable name should have been written by that person …

A response from Doug Ray, executive editor of the News:

… we published a column credited to England that is identical to one credited to McCampbell in the Greene County Independent. A Google search found that at least one other newspaper in the state — The Jacksonville News — also published it, crediting it to their local legislator, Rep. Lea Fite, D-Calhoun.
Dana Beyerle, our Montgomery bureau chief, did some digging. The piece came from the House Democratic Caucus, which distributed it to all its members. Neither House Majority Leader Ken Guin nor the staff of caucus he heads would tell Beyerle who specifically wrote the article.
I agree that this misled readers. It misled us. For our part, we should have checked more closely, asking England if he wrote the piece himself. We do that routinely with letters to the editor and columns submitted by the public.
Are House members who sent out the article with their own names attached guilty of plagiarism? Yes, but plagiarism of this sort — using a “ghost writer” — is very common. Politicians have aides. Business executives have public relations staff. Even judge’s opinions often are drafted by law clerks. All sorts of published material credit to one person is actually written by another.
Still, the press — this newspaper — cares that readers expect better transparency from us than you might find in other places.
Legislators at all levels submit columns to newspapers of all sizes. You see them published more frequently in smaller community newspapers that don’t have the resources for staff-written or syndicated columns. We print columns like these infrequently. When they are the legislators’ own words they can serve a worthwhile function, as reports from elected representatives back to the citizens who elected them.
I called Kelly McBride, an expert on journalism ethics at the Poynter Institute — a journalism think-tank. She said letters and columns published on opinion pages should “further the conversation” and “give voice to a variety of viewpoints.” And legislators’ columns can do that.
They fail, however, when the columns are simply widely distributed talking points or when letters to the editor are part of an special-interest e-mail campaign, McBride said.
I think that’s right. When we publish letters and columns, we should ask those who submit them if they are the actual authors. If they come from a widely distributed source, it calls into question how much they add to the discussion we try to convene on our opinion pages. If the legislator or agency executive had some help, we should reflect that in the credit line at the end of the column.
Readers like Mr. Burch expect high standards for credibility and transparency from us. I hope folks will continue to raise tough questions and get straight answers. That’s what journalism is all about. Link

Thanks, Karen!

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