This is the least enjoyable part of running this site, but we suppose somebody’s got to do it. Herewith, a month-by-month report of instances of plagiarism and fabrication in the press. Of particular note is the high number of incidents of plagiarism at student newspapers this year. A disturbing trend, to be sure.
January
A columnist and the administrative assistant to the editor at the San Antonio Express-News resigned after she was found plagiarizing from Wikipedia and other sources in three columns. Link
February
MSNBC.com removed a story how to sell a home in the slow winter season after it was discovered parts of it were plagiarized from an article on About.com. MSNBC did not the name the offender. Link
The Michigan Daily, a student newspaper, fired a writer after discovering plagiarism in four articles. The paper did not name the writer. Correction: The paper did name the writer.Link
March
The New York Times published an editor’s note after readers pointed out “a number of resemblances” between an essay in the Book Review and a passage in the book, “Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader.” It was not definitively determined to be plagiarism. Link
The Boston Globe suspended a sports columnist for two months without pay after it was revealed he plagiarized from a story in the News Tribune of Tacoma, Wash. Link
The chief editorial writer of Yamanashi Nichinichi Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper, was fired after admitting he had plagiarized in at least 15 editorials. Link
The New York Times published a letter to the editor about Dick Cheney that was later revealed to have been almost entirely “copied from an article about Mr. Cheney and the trial from the previous day’s newspaper.” Link
April
CBS News fired a producer after she plagiarized from the Wall Street Journal for a video essay on “Couric & Co.,” the Katie Couric/group blog on the CBS News website. Though CBS did not name her, the NY Sun later did. Link, link
The Daily Pennsylvanian, a student newspaper, fired a columnist after one of her submissions “bore uncanny similarities to a Yahoo! Food piece from March.” Link
The Washington Post published this correction: “One of the poems that KidsPost published as part of its poetry contest on Tuesday was not written by the child who submitted it. The poem that appeared as “Who Am I?” was actually written by J. Patrick Lewis and published in his book “Monumental Verses.” The child who sent the poem to KidsPost said she didn’t realize that entries to the contest had to be original. But copying something that someone else wrote without giving them credit is plagiarism, and it’s wrong.” Link
May
The Times UK ran a correction after “Some portions of an article about Hollywood romantic comedies” were not “attributed to… a New York Daily News article on the same subject from January.” Joe Neumaier, the author of the News article wrote the Times to say he considered it to be a case of plagiarism. Link
Chilean magazine Cosas withdrew an issue from newsstands after Radar magazine accused it of plagiarism. The Radar article “Toxic Bachelors” was translated and reproduced in Cosas by the magazine’s New York correspondent. Link
June
None.
July
Japanese newspaper Shizuoka Shimbun apologized after a front-page story about the death of a former prime minister was revealed to have been plagiarized from Wikipedia. Link
August
A reporter for the Explorer, weekly paper in Arizona, was fired after they were found to have taken a story written for a journalism class and, with a few minor updates, passed it off as new work. Aside from the dishonesty, one of the problems was that the piece was outdated and therefore contained inaccurate information. The paper did not name the reporter. Link
The Guardian published a correction and offered an apology after “A short introduction to an article about Russian oligarchs included three paragraphs that were substantially similar to paragraphs contained in the introduction to another, earlier, article, published in May, in the Exile – an English-language newspaper based in Moscow.” Link
September
None.
October
A sports reporter at the News Leader in Staunton, Virginia, was fired on Tuesday after an internal investigation revealed she “fabricated at least four stories and plagiarized from other stories on the Internet.” Link
A sex columnist at the GW Hatchet, a student newspaper, was fired after a column he wrote “borrowed ideas” from a book and website. Link
November
A columnist at the Brown Daily Herald, a student newspaper, was fired after editors discovered that six of his columns included plagiarized material. The same writer also plagiarized in a letter to the editor that was published in the New York Times. Link
A professor at the Missouri School of Journalism lost his column in a university paper staffed by journalism students and faculty after admitting he committed “unintentional” plagiarism. Link
The San Antonio Express-News fired a longtime sports reporter after he plagiarized from www.bowl.com and www.pbatour.com. Many people took to the comments section of our post to protest his firing and question whether he had in fact plagiarized. Link
The Economist published a correction after a freelance writer in Uganda plagiarized from the Daily Monitor in Uganda and used the work in a piece for the magazine. Link
December
After four-and-a-half months of re-reporting, The New Republic retracted articles written by its Baghdad Diarist. Link
The National Review Online had to retract a story and clarify another after questions were raised about the veracity of the reporting, though the publication denied any fabrication occurred. Link
Dhia al-Kawaz, the editor of the Jordan-based Asawat al-Iraq news agency, admitted he fabricated the story that 11 members of his family had been killed in Iraq. In reality, one member was killed. Link
Did we miss any? Let us know.
6 Comments
I’d like to think that the increased mentions of plagiarism at student media has more to do with the fact that many of them choose to make such errors public and apologize for them instead of keeping it to themselves and scolding the writers in private.
I’d like to think that, anyway.
I agree. I know that in my four-year stint at a major college paper there were at least three cases of suspected and definite plagiarism, and we dealt with it internally.
Hmmmm. Maybe an increase in reports by student papers, however, by my count, the number of instances you mention by “professional” publications far outnumbers the instances by student publications. Just 4 of the 23 instances you mention were in student publications. I may well be missing something, but why the negative attention for student papers when the pros (i.e. role models) are clearly not setting the example?
You know, it’s kind of infuriating as a freelancer who has to work hard to find work to see people who’ve “made it” sit back and take the easy and unethical way out.
Way to appreciate what you’ve got, guys.
The Michigan Daily did name the writer. http://media.www.michigandaily.com/media/storage/paper851/news/2007/02/21/News/From-The.Editor-2733056.shtml
WIll you post a correction?
Thanks for bringing that error to my attention, Michigan Daily. I’ve corrected the post.
As a general note, I mentioned the incidents at student papers because they have gotten worse over the last two years. There were none in 2005 (by my count) and we’ve had several each year over the past two years. I think I should have been more specific in my post.
It’s also valid to note, as some of you have, that perhaps these papers didn’t previously make a habit of revealing incidents of plagiarism. I hope that’s not the case, but it’s certainly possible.
And just so no one thinks I’m anti-student papers, I spent four great years at a student newspaper in Montreal.
Thanks for the comments!
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