After The New York Post, no stranger to plagiarism itself, leveled plagiarism accusations against Ann Coulter last week, the company that syndicates her column decided to look into the issue. Editor & Publisher has a story about Universal’s findings. Bottom line: it says her work is clean. Here’s the statement that Universal president and editor Lee Salem sent to E&P:
Last week a software program company official ran
Ann Coulter’s columns through a ‘match-text’ program, frequently used
by teachers to detect original work. The New York Post cited two
columns in which some text matched other published materials and also
mentioned three snippets in her book, ‘Godless: The Church of
Liberalism.’
In addition to looking at the columns mentioned in
the New York Post story, we also reviewed a sampling of other columns
that have been mentioned in the media. Like her book publisher, Crown,
Universal Press Syndicate finds no merits to the allegations of
plagiarism brought by the software company executive. There are only so
many ways you can rewrite a fact and minimal matching text is not
plagiarism.
Universal Press Syndicate is confident in the ability
of Ms. Coulter, an attorney and frequent media target, to know when to
make attribution and when not to. We also have confidence in our
35-year history of detecting fraudulent and unethical work, having
represented conservatives and liberal commentators alike.
E&P also got comment from John Barrie, whose company did the initial report on her work. On the one had he said some of her work is "uncited, it is unoriginal, and it does look
like plagiarism." Then he seems to hedge a bit: "Our technology is not designed to make those
judgment calls," So it’s up to her syndiacte and publisher. As of now, they stand behind her work.
