The Philadelphia Daily News recently ran an op-ed from a reader who is a regular contributor to its letters page. Unfortunately, the reader plagiarized his op-ed piece, thus requiring the News to run this Editor’s Note yesterday:
On Friday, June 30, the Daily News published an op-ed, “The N-word, a never-ending obstacle,”
by Carlton R. Manley, who has been a frequent contributor to our
letters page. We subsequently discovered that the piece had been
plagiarized from noted writer Anthony Asadullah Samad.
To
have one’s words stolen by another is one of the greatest injustices
that can occur to a writer. We regret that Anthony Asadullah Samad had
to suffer that injustice. Link
We found close to 20 letters from Manley that had been published in the News since 2003. The author’s note at the end of the stolen op-ed describes him as a “an African-American who lives in Philadelphia.” We’ve contacted Mr. Samad (see below) to get his thoughts on the incident and to see how much of his work was stolen in the op-ed, since the News didn’t indicate how much of the piece was cribbed. One also wonders how the theft was discovered.
UPDATE: Anthony Asadullah Samad called us tonight. He also directed us to the text of the column that was stolen. It ran a week before the Daily news op-ed. A comparison of his work and that of the op-ed shows that the two are nearly identical. Manley deleted a few parts, added a few sentences and sent it in. Here is how each column begins:
Samad:
In the second part of this series, I want to examine why African
Americans, Blacks, Negroes, Negritudes (whatever we choose to call
ourselves) can’t seem to escape the word Nigger-and its afterbirth,
Nigga. Since last week’s column, I’ve received hundreds of e-mails with
varying reactions to this series.Everything from making excuses as to why we shouldn’t be offended by
the word-because “the Bible” tells one reader that God’s real name
(MiNigri) and Gods’ real land Nigritia are the origins of the word that
should cause us to embrace it forever, to another reader being
apathetic about the word’s use-telling me “I need Jesus” for wasting my
time (and column space) trying to convince Blacks (and others) not to
use the word anymore…
Manley:
I want to examine why African-Americans, blacks, Negroes, Negritudes (whatever we choose to call ourselves) can’t seem to escape the word “nigger” - and its afterbirth, “nigga.”
Everything from making excuses as to why we shouldn’t be offended by the word because the Bible allegedly reveals that it comes from God’s real name (MiNigri) and God’s real land (Nigritia), to another person’s apathy about its use, telling me I “need Jesus” instead of wasting my time trying to convince blacks (and others) not to use the word anymore.
It’s basically outright theft. Samad says he was alerted to the similarities in the Daily News piece by one of his readers. He then contacted the paper to raise the issue. He also asked that he be compensated since the paper basically reprinted one of his columns. The paper says Manley wasn’t paid for the piece (?) so it declined to offer him payment.
“I guess [the writer] expected that no one would notice because I’m in California and he’s in Philadelphia,” he says “But the world is a lot closer because of the Internet.”
Samad says this is the second time his work has been plagiarized.
“The other time was by a college newspaper,” he says “They plagiarized a piece of mine that ran on blackcommentator.com…[the Daily News] did offer to run my pieces in the future. They acknowledged the piece was well written, which is why they ran it. As of right now my work has a readership of about 1 million people per week.”
He says he was mostly satisfied with the correction, but that he’s disappointed that he wasn’t offered any compensation for the piece.
“It was almost word for word [the same as mine],” he says.
We’ll try and update with some comments from the paper. Samad says an editor told him it was unable to contact Manley during its investigation. So what happened to the once prolific letter writer?
UPDATE July 22: The paper has published a letter of apology from the writer. More here.
