Regret the Error

It’s a depressing job, but somebody’s got to do it. Below is my annual round-up of the year in plagiarism and fabrication. The good news is that there were fewer incidents than in 2008. Please email me if I’ve missed anything.

January

None!

February

New York Daily News reporter Rosemary Black stole two paragraphs and two quotes from a story published on the front page of the San Antonio Express-News. Link

Barney Gimbel, a writer with Fortune magazine, resigned after being shown evidence that he had plagiarized from an article in the New York Times Magazine. Link

March

None!

April

Erwin James, the nom de plume used by a convicted murderer who writes regularly for the Guardian, admitted that he fabricated parts of a 2006 Guardian article about his experiences in the Foreign Legion. Link

*A student named Nicole Sobel plagiarized several sections of a New York Times op-ed for her column in the University of Massachusetts Daily Collegian. She was subsequently removed from the paper’s staff and the paper apologized. Link

May

Maureen Dowd admitted to a using a sentence taken from Talking Points Memo. She later explained that the words had been provided by a “friend,” suggesting that she meant to copy it from him/her. Link

June

Toledo Free Press columnist Maggie Thurber resigned after one of her columns was found to have included plagiarized material. Link

Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson admitted that a “screwup” resulted in his book, Free, including multiple passages lifted from Wikipedia. Link

Kris DeRego, the news editor at Ka Leo, the student paper at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, was fired after the paper looked through his previous work and found a trail of fabricated sources. Link

July

Hailey Mac Arthur, a college student doing a summer internship at the Colorado Springs Gazette, was fired after the paper discovered she repeatedly plagiarized from the New York Times. Link

Cotswold Life magazine apologized after revealing that its January and February issues included material taken from SoGlos.com. Link

The New York Times Magazine published an editors’ note to detail that a feature by Charles Siebert included language taken from an email message. Critics were quick to note that a similar transgression by Maureen Dowd resulted in a correction, rather than an editors’ note. Link

The Times (U.K.) apologized after an article failed to attribute information to Cornerstone, the magazine of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. Link

The Telegraph-Journal of New Brunswick issued a front page apology to admit that it fabricated an accusation against the Canadian prime minister. Then, in September, it apologized to Monsignor Brian Henneberry for fabricating a quote from him in the same report.

August

None!

September

The Telegraph-Journal of New Brunswick apologized after Cheryl Norrad, a “contract writer,” plagiarized a story from the province’s French-language daily newspaper. Link

Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, known for playing a significant role in nuclear proliferation, was found to have plagiarized in a column he wrote for The News. Link

After facing a barrage of criticism, the Hartford Courant apologized for repeatedly and knowingly plagiarizing the work of its competitors. It was later sued by another paper. Link

October

None!

November

The Guardian published a correction to note that it “failed to acknowledge South Africa’s Sunday Times as the source of an article about a passenger on a South African air force flight who was catapulted into the sky when his ejector seat fired.” Link

December

Mona Sarika, a freelance writer, was revealed to be a serial plagiarist. Her work for Foreign Policy, the Huffington Post, and the Wall Street Journal included stolen (and fabricated) material. Link

*Editor’s Note: This entry was added on the afternoon of Dec. 16. Thanks, Steve!

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