Regret the Error

By our count, this year was worse than last year. In particular, there were a high number of student journalist plagiarism incidents near the end of 2006.
So are media organizations/the public getting better at exposing plagiarists, or are there in fact more incidents? It’s tough to give a definitive answer. Certainly, there’s more scrutiny than ever before and Google has made it easier to catch a thief, but the parade of plagiarists and fabricators seems perpetual. Hopefully, this round-up serves as a deterrent.
We’d also like to repeat the too-frequent mantra of this website: if plagiarism or fabrication occurs on any level, even by accident, the only acceptable course of action is to investigate the previous work of the offending reporter. This is the only way to remove any doubts about the accidental or one-time nature of the offense. It’s how you reveal the truth. Fail to do so and you can be sure somebody else will pick up the slack.
Let us know if we missed any incidents.

In late December 2005 (after our plagiarism round-up was published), the Toronto Star plagiarized from a decade-old brief written about a Reuters story published in 1995. The brief was published by This Is True. The paper eventually ran a correction but did not acknowledge the theft. Full Post
In January, The Press Enterprise, a newspaper in Bloomsburg, Pa., discovered that Kate York, a reporter, fabricated interviews in 24 stories. Full Post
In January, Wikipedia helped expose plagiarism by Honolulu Star-Bulletin reporter Tim Ryan. The paper later investigated and fired him for plagiarizing in at least six articles. Full Post
In January, The Cavalier Daily, a student paper at the University of Virginia, discovered that significant parts of a tech column by Michael Desmond had been partly plagiarized from PC World. Full Post
In January, a regional bureau chief and freelance columnist at the Chronicle Herald newspaper in Halifax, Nova Scotia was suspended for six months without pay after the paper discovered more than 10 stories and columns included plagiarized material. Full Post
In January, the Baltimore City Paper revealed that an investigation of columns by Baltimore Sun columnist Michael Olesker showed he had plagiarized on repeated occasions. The investigation followed a Sun correction that said Olesker had “failed to include attribution” in a December column. Olesker subsequently resigned, but admitted no wrongdoing. Full Post
In January, the LA Times published a lengthy correction that sidestepped using the actual word plagiarism, though that’s what had occurred. A Dec. 18 column by staff writer Cecilia Rasmussen led with a plagiarized sentence and proceeded to lift other material. Full Post
In March, ABCNews.com ran an article that was heavily plagiarized from one that appeared in the Boston Globe. It didn’t name the guilty party and the resulting correction was only on its Website for one day. Full Post
In March, the Village Voice removed a cover story from its website after discovering that the writer, Nick Sylvester, had fabricated parts of it. He was immediately suspended. Full Post
In March, Ben Domenech, a conservative blogger hired by the Washington Post, resigned after he was accused of plagiarizing previous work for a student newspaper and in National Review Online. Article
In April, Atlanta Journal-constitution reporter Don Plummer resigned after admitting to plagiarizing from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Full Post
In April, The Globe & Mail apologized to The New Republic after a profile of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad published in the newspaper included content from a story published in the magazine. The paper called it a failure of attribution, not plagiarism. Full Post
In April, Carla Bagley, a long time reporter with the News & Record in Greensboro, North Carolina lost her job after plagiarizing from the Business Journal. Full Post
In May, the Richmond Times-Dispatch fired reporter Paul Bradley after he fabricated part of a story. Full Post
In May, freelance language columnist Howard Richler was fired by the Montreal Gazette after an investigation revealed he had plagiarized parts of his columns. Richler denied the charge. Full Post
In June, The New York Post suspended reporter Andy Geller after he plagiarized from the New York Times. The Post refused to acknowledge it happened. Full Post
In July, the Philadelphia Daily News published an op-ed from a local man who had been a prodigious letter writer to the paper. Then it discovered he had plagiarized almost the entire article. The man later wrote a letter of apology to readers. Full Post
In July, John Heineman,, a writer with the Daily Iowan student newspaper, admitted to plagiarizing from a Democratic Policy Committee report. Full Post
In July, The New York Post ran an article accusing author/columnist Ann Coulter of plagiarism. Her syndicate and publisher later refuted the charges after looking into the issue. Full Post
In August, the Salt Lake Tribune fired reporter Shinika Sykes after she plagiarized material from the University of Utah’s student newspaper. Sykes denied the charge. Full Post
In August, Wired News removed three stories after an investigation revealed fabrications by freelancer Philip Chien. Full Post
In October, the Harvard Crimson fired a writer after her column failed to credit source material to Slate and she wrote about an event as if she had witnessed it, even though she hadn’t. Full Post
In November, the Local, an English language news site based in Sweden, accused Xinhua, the state-run Chinese news service, of repeatedly plagiarizing from its work. Full Post
In November, the Star Tribune acknowledged that an editorial had plagiarized from a comment piece in the New Yorker. After refusing to name the guilty party or investigate his previous work, the Power Line blog, which had leveled the initial accusation, revealed more instances of theft. The paper then named the offender and launched an investigation. In the end, it found no further instances and cleared the writer. Full Post
In November, student paper the Daily Northwestern retracted a story and fired freshman reporter Tania Chen after she plagiarized in her first article for the paper. Full Post
In November, the Toronto Star published a story by an inexperienced freelancer that included fabricated and exaggerated quotes. Strangely, the story went into the paper without any exchange between an editor and the writer. Full Post
In December, the Daily Utah Chronicle, a student paper, fired arts writer Mark Mitchell for serial plagiarism. Full Post
In December, the Badger Herald, a student newspaper, fired its state editor, Dan Powell, after the paper discovered at least 10 of his stories included plagiarized material. Full Post

Photoshop Gone Wrong

In March, the New York Times Magazine ran an editor’s note after its cover photo of Mark Warner, a former Virginia governor, “rendered colors incorrectly.” As the magazine noted: “The Times’s policy rules out alteration of photographs that depict actual news scenes and, even in a contrived illustration, requires acknowledgment in a credit.” Full Post and Photo
In August, the Charlotte Observer fired photographer Patrick Schneider after he altered the colors in an image. It was the second time he had done so. Full Post
In August, Reuters fired photographer Adnan Hajj for altering images taken during the war in Lebanon. Full Post
In September, CBS’ promotional Watch magazine altered an image of Katie Couric, making her look much slimmer. For details and the image, read our Crunks ’06 round-up.
In November, Marie Claire magazine came under fire for altering an image of Elizabeth Vargas to make it appear as if she was breastfeeding while sitting behind an anchor desk. Article