Tag Archives: Plagiarism

Plagiarism at the Ventura County Star

February 29, 2008 – 12:02 pm

Romenesko spotted this report from the Ventura County Star about a surfing columnist that was fired due to plagiarism:

The weekly column, Surfing Scene, by David Burroughs has been cancelled by the Ventura County Star because of evidence of plagiarism.
Burroughs, who was hired on contract to write the column, acknowledged that material in two of his columns was obtained from other sources and used without attribution.
Burroughs explained to The Star that he did not believe the use of the material was plagiarism.
He believed by using mostly quotations from other sources that it was not plagiarism.
“We have zero tolerance for plagiarism,” said Star Managing Editor John Moore. “Our contract with our freelance writers includes a journalistic integrity clause that requires them to write their pieces in accordance with the law and generally accepted journalistic practices.’ ”
The plagiarism came to light when Paul Glickman, news director of Southern California Public Radio, contacted The Star regarding a Burroughs’ column about expansion of Highway 241 toll road in Orange County through a prime surfing spot.
Glickman pointed out that at least seven paragraphs of that column came directly from an online version of a radio story done for KPCC radio by Susan Valot. The Burroughs column ran Jan. 22 in The Star and Valot’s piece aired Jan. 9.
The Star confirmed that the material in Surfing Scene came from her story and Burroughs admitted that was his source for it.
Further investigation by The Star uncovered a Feb. 5 column by Burroughs regarding the theft of a web camera trained on a popular East Coast surfing spot.
Much of six paragraphs in that column came from a Jan. 27 story in the New York Times by Corey Kilgannon.
Burroughs admitted that was his source for the material.
Burroughs had no journalism experience when he was hired by The Star in 2007 to begin his column, which appeared Tuesdays in the Sports section…

It’s good that the paper’s contract includes an “integrity clause,” but having it on paper isn’t enough to ensure contributors — staff or freelance — understand what is and isn’t plagiarism. A contract can help indemnify the paper, but it doesn’t do anything in terms of training. If the paper is hiring people with no journalism background, then it is responsible for making sure they understand the fundamentals of the profession.

I haven’t seen this specific contract, but providing a basic guide of Dos and Don’ts to any new contributor could be more helpful than a clause that many folks will gloss over. Prepare the guide and then require the assigning editor to take a few minutes and explain it to the contributor. A 10-minute phone conversation aided by a paper-based guide can help avoid a situation like this. It’s worth the time and effort.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged | Comments

Plagiarism at the New York Times

February 28, 2008 – 5:41 pm

While preparing a column this week, Slate’s Jack Shafer stumbled upon an incident of plagiarism at the New York Times. Shafer wrote a column about the theft and the Times has now responded with an Editor’s Note:

A front-page article on Saturday described a cocaine epidemic in Argentina fed by the consumption of paco, an addictive smokable cocaine residue. The article included an explanatory paragraph about paco’s addictive power and toxicity that repeated material from a 2006 article published in The Miami Herald, without attributing it to the newspaper. The correspondent, who had done his own research with Argentine and Brazilian officials on the drug and its effects, should have summarized it in his own words, or credited The Herald.
The passage in question is this:
“Paco is highly addictive because its high lasts just a few minutes—and is so intense that many users smoke 20 to 50 paco cigarettes a day to try to make its effects linger. Paco is even more toxic than crack cocaine because it is made mostly of solvents and chemicals like kerosene, with just a dab of cocaine, Argentine and Brazilian drug enforcement officials said.”

Times Managing Editor Jill Abramson told Shafer that, “I think when you take material almost word-for-word and don’t credit it, it is [plagiarism].” Abramson declined to detail if Alexei Barrionuevo, the writer, will face discipline. The Times has a policy of not talking publicly about personnel issues, which Shafer notes is common at many organizations. But does this mean the public won’t know whether or not the paper decided to review Barrionuevo’s previous work, something that should be standard practice after any incident of plagiarism?

Hopefully the Public Editor will investigate how the paper is handling the issue. At this point, the lack of information leaves Barrionuevo open to speculation about his previous work for the paper. It’s one thing to keep the specific discipline an internal matter. But the post-Blair era requires a paper to be transparent about how it handles an incident of plagiarism. As of now, readers know nothing about how the paper treats such a serious offense.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged , | Comments

Plagiarism at the Miami Herald

February 14, 2008 – 8:00 am

A correction:

A story about the Broward Sheriff’s Office’s semiannual awards ceremony, which appeared on Page 2B of the Broward edition on Feb. 6, included several paragraphs that should have been attributed to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Details and quotations from the Sun-Sentinel story, including the comments of civilian honoree John Clark, were used in The Herald’s report on the event without appropriate attribution. This is a violation of The Miami Herald’s editorial policies and is under internal review. Link

An editor’s note/apology is typically the method for revealing an incident of plagiarism. Let’s hope details of the internal review are made public.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged , | Comments

Plagiarism at the Brown Daily Herald

February 12, 2008 – 8:00 am

IvyGate and Gawker recently noted a recent incident of plagiarism at the Brown Daily Herald. Here’s the editors note:

Last week, as part of its usual fact-checking process, The Herald discovered that two news articles scheduled for publication contained material taken from other sources’ reporting without quotation or attribution. The articles were never printed. The Herald began a thorough review of the writers’ published work, as it does whenever inauthentic content is found.
During that review, two published articles were found that contained passages similar or identical to those in other publications.
“Common App now has rival in Universal App,” (Sept. 26, 2007) contains text similar or identical to writing in an article in the Yale Daily News (”Common App faces new online rival,” Sept. 7, 2007). The article also contains information from an interview not attributed to the News’ reporting.
“James Watson, co-discoverer of DNA structure, resigns after racist remarks,” (Oct. 31, 2007) contained quotations not attributed to reporting for an article in the Harvard Crimson (”Watson Apologizes Amid Uproar Over His Comments on Race,” Oct. 19, 2007).
The Herald makes every possible effort to verify the authenticity of our contributors’ content before publication. Our reporters and columnists receive continual training on the ethics of their work.
We sincerely apologize to the publications whose work was copied and to our readers.

I listed plagiarism at student newspapers among the Trends of Note in my 2007 wrap-up of the year in errors and corrections. Let’s hope this isn’t a sign of things to come for 2008.

On a related note, this incident inspired Gawker to get its Google Maps on. Maggie Shnayerson created a map of incidents of plagiarism at American universities. Have a look here.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged , | Comments

NY Press columnist resigns over plagiarism

January 25, 2008 – 8:00 am

An editor’s note form the New York Press:

It has come to our attention that some of the questions in this week’s debut of the New York Press’s new sex-advice column, “Lip Service,” were taken from past columns by Dan Savage, the nationally-syndicated sex-advice columnist and editor of The Stranger. The author of the column, Claudia Lonow, a television writer based in Los Angeles who had not previously written for a newspaper, used the questions to provide material for her inaugural column, in the absence of real questions from readers. It had been our understanding that the questions for her first column came from friends. She has told us she was unaware that using questions from Savage’s column was a breach of journalism ethics. She has offered her resignation, and we’ve accepted it. We apologize to our readers, and to Dan Savage, for this error in judgment. Link

Wow, one column and out. This is a good argument for making sure new writers/journalists fully understand all relevant ethical guidelines. Jezebel appears to have played a hand in revealing the theft.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged , | Comments

Sunday Times plagiarizes from Radar magazine

January 11, 2008 – 8:00 am

It appears that Radar magazine produces some very enticing content. Last year, a Chilean magazine plagiarized from Radar’s Toxic Bachelors feature. Then, this past Sunday, the London Sunday Times “inadvertently” plagiarized content from a Radar piece, “100 Reasons Why You’re Still Single.” A report from the Guardian:

A piece headlined “50 Reasons Why You’re Still Single” appeared in the Sunday Times Style magazine, bylined to the title’s deputy editor, Camilla Long.
The feature was a humorous miscellany of men and women’s irritating personal habits, such as “use the word babe” and “posed with your cat on your Facebook profile”.
However, more than 15 of the Sunday Times’ 50 entries were substantially similar to a list, “100 Reasons Why You’re Still Single”, that appeared in US pop culture Radar magazine last September.
The Style magazine editor, Tiffany Darke, confirmed that the magazine’s deputy editor, Camilla Long, penned the piece.
Darke also confirmed that many of the items were the same as those included in Radar’s list.
She told MediaGuardian.co.uk that Style magazine had decided to run a piece on the theme and invited contributions from friends, contacts and colleagues.
The Sunday Times’ “50 Reasons…” piece had separate men’s and women’s lists with 25 items each, while Radar had a single list with 100 entries.
Darke said the items that were the same as on Radar’s list came from an unnamed contributor and the magazine ran them without checking…

The Guardian piece also includes a comparison between the Radar and Times articles. Hopefully the paper will do away with publishing unchecked information from “unnamed contributors.”

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged | Comments

How to spot a plagiarist/fabulist

January 8, 2008 – 8:00 am

John McIntyre, the Baltimore Sun’s assistant managing editor for the copy desk, has written an excellent blog post about plagiarism and fabrication. McIntyre is the language and usage guru at the paper. He uses that knowledge base to offer up a list of ways to spot a plagiarist or fabulist. These should be provided to every editor in every newsroom:

Changes in diction: If the vocabulary of an otherwise amateurish student writer or cliche-ridden hack journalist should abruptly grow sophisticated, lifting is likelier than an infusion from the muse.

Changes in syntax: Same thing. If a writer who struggles to cobble together a noun and a verb suddenly masters the compound-complex sentence, with attendant Ciceronian participial ornaments, it’s time to start looking elsewhere.

Specialized information: Ask Howard Baker’s question from the Watergate hearings of beloved memory: What did he know, and when did he know it? Sudden access to biographical details, historical information, ecclesiastical terminology or scientific or medical expertise has to have come from somewhere. Demand an explanation of the source.

Dubious sources: Any article based on a single source is automatically suspect — how can you tell that the source wasn’t lying? Where’s the confirmation? Similarly, anything based on second- or third-hand sources demands scrutiny. In addition, readers are justifiably suspicious of anonymous sources. Even when anonymity has been granted for good reason, such as the source’s reasonable fear of physical or economic injury, the writer should be obliged to reveal the source to the assigning editor, acquire supporting information, and give the reader as much information as is prudent about the anonymous source’s credibility.

Improbabilities: When Jack Kelly filed his famous story with USA Today about seeing, in the aftermath of a bombing, human heads rolling down the street, their eyelids still blinking, it would have been a good thing for the paper if an editor had said, “What the hell?” and followed up. In journalism, as in investment offers, if it looks too good to be true. …

Here’s more great advice about how to follow up if you suspect plagiarism or fabrication, and what to do if your discover it:

Your job is to be skeptical, not gullible. Any writer’s work ought to stand up to questioning, particularly about sourcing. So ask the questions.

As it happens, the very ease of theft that the Internet provides also offers ease of detection. Use Lexis-Nexis or Google to find information on the subject that the suspect article covers. Do searches on distinctive and anomalous phrases. (Some colleges and universities employ specialized software and run term papers through it.) Check it out.

Follow up. The first question that must always be asked when a plagiarism is detected is this: Has he/she done this before? This has to be checked out, but it won’t be unless you, who have detected the misdeed, report it to someone in authority.

Don’t agonize over fear of appearing to be an informer. If the instance you identify is a first-time mistake made out of ignorance, you may save a colleague’s career. If it turns out to be one in a pattern of lies, then the career wasn’t worth saving.

Seriously, this should be handed out to every editor in every newsroom.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Behind the scenes, Fabrication, Plagiarism | Also tagged | Comments

Plagiarism at the Weekly Standard

January 3, 2008 – 8:00 am

An alert reader pointed us to an apology contained in the Dec 31 issue of the Weekly Standard. The magazine admits that an article by David Satter contained “several passages…taken without attribution from Jonas Bernstein’s articles in the Eurasia Daily Monitor.” The magazine avoids the “p” word, but does include an example of an offending passage. The apology:

SEVERAL PASSAGES in David Satter’s “Russia Incorporated” (December 17) were taken without attribution from Jonas Bernstein’s articles in the Eurasia Daily Monitor, published by the Jamestown Foundation. For instance–
Bernstein: “For now, however, Putin appears to be trying to maintain a balance between the warring factions: After Cherkesov’s article appeared in Kommersant, Putin publicly scolded him, telling Kommersant that it is ‘wrong to bring these kinds of problems to the media’ and that someone who claims a war between security agencies is going on ’should, first of all, be spotless.’ Yet the following day, Putin created a new state committee to fight illegal drugs and named Cherkesov as its chief” (Eurasia Daily Monitor, Nov. 2, 2007).
Satter: “Putin appears to be trying to maintain a balance between the warring sides. After Cherkesov’s article appeared in Kommersant, Putin publicly criticized him, saying it is ‘wrong to bring these kinds of problems to the media.’ Yet the following day, Putin created a new state committee to fight illegal drugs and named Cherkesov as its chief.”
THE WEEKLY STANDARD and the author apologize to Mr. Bernstein, to the Jamestown Foundation, and to our readers. We also commend to our readers the articles by Mr. Bernstein that served as source material: “Finansgroup: How Russia’s Siloviki Do Business,” EDM, Nov. 30, 2007; “Stanislav Belkovsky: Putin Will Leave Power Completely,” EDM, Nov. 19, 2007; and “St. Petersburg Poisonings: Part of Siloviki Factional Fight?” EDM, Nov. 2, 2007. All of these may be found at the Eurasia Daily Monitor website, www.jamestown.org/edm.

An apology is good, but the Weekly Standard doesn’t say anything about having examined Satter’s previous work for evidence of plagiarism. Did it undertake such an examination?

Thanks, Kevin!

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Magazines, Major Errors, Plagiarism | Also tagged | Comments

Press release printed “nearly verbatim” in paper

December 17, 2007 – 8:00 am

An Editor’s Note:

In the Statesman’s Schools column on Wednesday’s Page B2 , the first three paragraphs of an item about school breakfasts were taken nearly verbatim from a news release by the Center for Public Policy Priorities. It is not the American-Statesman’s practice to print items from outside sources verbatim and without proper credit. We regret the error.

Though the note consciously avoids using the word, this does fall into the plagiarism category.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged , | Comments

2007 Plagiarism/Fabrication Round-Up

December 11, 2007 – 6:00 am

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.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Plagiarism, Regret Articles | Also tagged , | Comments

Plagiarism at the Economist

November 20, 2007 – 8:00 am

Our article on Ugandan guards working in Iraq, written for us by a freelance journalist in Uganda, was drawn substantially from an article published previously in Uganda’s Daily Monitor and written by David Herbert. We were, of course, unaware of this. We apologise to Mr Herbert, the Daily Monitor and our readers. Link

This is a situation where the Economist, which does not have bylines on its articles, should name the offending party. Has he or she written for the magazine before? And if so, have those articles been checked for plagiarism? Naming the offender would also enable other publications to check if they have published articles by the writer.

Thanks, Dave!

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Magazines, Major Errors, Plagiarism | Also tagged | Comments

What IT security can teach us about accuracy

November 15, 2007 – 8:00 am

Bruce Schneier, one of the leading thinkers in IT security, recently wrote a column for Wired.com in which he uses the example of corrupt NBA referee Tim Donaghy to examine systems that suffer from single points of failure. The same concept directly relates to journalism and accuracy.

What sorts of systems — IT, financial, NBA games or whatever — are most at risk of being manipulated? The ones where the smallest change can have the greatest impact, and the ones where trusted insiders can make that change.

Donaghy used his position to try and influence the outcome of games, and he was able to because of the way the NBA games operate:

Because individual players matter so much, a single referee can affect a basketball game more than he can in any other sport. Referees call fouls. Contact occurs on nearly every play, any of which could be called as a foul. They’re called “touch fouls,” and they are mostly, but not always, ignored. The refs get to decide which ones to call.

Schneier lists other examples of jobs where people are “both trusted insiders and single points of catastrophic failure.” It could be a “dishonest computer-repair technician…a corrupt judge, police officer, customs inspector, border-control officer, food-safety inspector…”

Or a journalist. Newsrooms build in layers of auditing in an attempt to mitigate the ability of a trusted insider to subvert the system: copy editors, assignment editors etc. But each person in the chain of audit (editing process) is both a point of quality control and a potential point of failure. We then attempt to mitigate that reality by requiring reporters to take notes or record interviews, cite sources, and talk to experts.

Yet we still see people like Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass, trusted insiders who become single points of catastrophic failure. Incidents of plagiarism, fabrication, and extreme error abound. Clearly, we need to evolve our audit systems. The current reality of shrunken newsrooms — and therefore reduced audit controls — makes it even more imperative that we innovate new ways of ensuring quality. The speed of online news also requires us to find ways to do it at a faster pace.

Yes, a tough challenge. But an exciting one, too.

“All systems have trusted insiders,” according to Schneier. “All systems have catastrophic points of failure. The key is recognizing them, and building monitoring and audit systems to secure them.”

So what does the ideal newsroom monitoring and auditing system look like? Likely a combination of prevention — fact checking, plagiarism detection, training, editing etc. — mixed with post-publication/post-broadcast error tracking and analysis. These elements demand a mix of people, processes and technology. The challenge is creating the right mix and then constantly managing, evolving and improving the system.

It’s a difficult task, but the status quo is a recipe for repeated “catastrophic failures.”

Would you keep following the NBA if you knew another Tim Donaghy was inevitable?

Have an idea for newsroom auditing? Share it in the comments.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Regret Articles | Also tagged , , , | Comments

Journalism professor loses column over plagiarism

November 13, 2007 – 8:00 am

This has already been a bad year for plagiarism at student newspapers, but this latest incident, spotted by Romenesko, is very surprising. A professor at the Missouri School of Journalism  has lost his column in a university paper staffed by journalism students and faculty after admitting he committed “unintentional” plagiarism. From a story in the paper:

Last Sunday, columnist John Merrill wrote about the MU Women’s and Gender Studies Program. Quotes and other phrases in the column were repeated directly from an Oct. 5 article in The Maneater without crediting that newspaper or the article’s author, Anna Koeppel.
That was wrong.
Missourian policy does not allow any writer to appropriate someone else’s words as his own, even when those words are within quotation marks. In the column, three quotes, and about half a sentence, were taken from Koeppel’s story.
Several journalists and journalism educators I spoke with referred to the use as the ethical equivalent of a misdemeanor, not a felony.
I believe the Missourian, and the School of Journalism, must hold itself to a higher standard.
The newspaper’s policy prohibits “using material from other publications without attribution.”
As such, the Missourian will no longer run columns by Professor Merrill.

Merill says, “I assure you that it was ‘unintentional’ plagiarism, and I had no reason to make it look as if I got these quotes from the sources directly. I was using them as a springboard for my opinion. But I did it, and I’m sorry. Careless, I’ll admit, but not intentional. All these dozens and dozens of columns and some 30 books and innumerable magazine and newspaper articles and never before have I been accused of plagiarism.”

The paper reviewed his last year of columns and found that “none had the same amount of lifted material as the one Sunday; however, there were five more columns in which at least one quote had been taken from other publications without attribution.”

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged | Comments

Plagiarism at the San Antonio Express-News

November 13, 2007 – 8:00 am

Talk about burying the lead.
After spending the majority of his column chastising a television station and newspaper for lifting material from his paper, San Antonio Express-News public editor Bob Richter finally gets around to the real news: his paper recently fired a sports reporter for committing plagiarism.

…veteran E-N sports staffer Harry Page was terminated last week for lifting information — which he presented in his bowling blog as his own — from two websites: www.bowl.com, the Web site of the U.S. Bowling Congress, and www.pbatour.com, the Professional Bowlers Association Tour Web site.
The plagiarized work appeared only on MySA.com and has been removed.
Page had worked in the sports department since April 19, 1970, and was one of the first people to greet me here when I joined the sports staff in 1978. I hate to see him go out like this, but, as Editor Robert Rivard told staff, the newspaper has “zero tolerance” for plagiarism.
It was an ethics wakeup call for Express-News journalists and, I hope, will be for our brethren in broadcast news as well.

This important information should have been the main focus of his column, and it would have been good to understand how the plagiarism was discovered, and whether or not Page’s previous work was examined. The paper removed the offending articles, but could more be lurking in the archives? Let’s hope not, but it would be nice to know for sure.

Kudos to Romenesko for spotting it.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged | Comments

Plagiarism at the Brown Daily Herald

November 9, 2007 – 8:00 am

A columnist at the Brown Daily Herald, a student newspaper, has been 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 recently published in the New York Times. The Times published an Editor’s Note yesterday, and the student paper published one on Monday. From the Brown Daily Herald’s Note:

The Herald has discovered that six opinions columns by Zachary Townsend ‘09 published between 2005 and 2007 contained passages that are similar or identical to text that previously appeared in other published work. Such misrepresentation is a fundamental violation of Herald policy, and Townsend has consequently been dismissed as a Herald columnist.
On Oct. 24, in the routine fact-checking process used for all Herald news and opinions content, a Herald copy editor discovered that a portion of a column by Townsend that was slated for publication was nearly identical to a passage in “The Curricular Revolution,” an academic paper written by Katie Kinsey ‘09 and posted on the University Library Web site.
The column was not published. The Herald then began a thorough review of Townsend’s 15 past columns, which revealed that six of his published columns contained material similar or identical to material in previously published works. When questioned about this discovery, Townsend admitted that several columns contained unoriginal work.

The paper then lists the offending columns and offers an apology to readers. The paper did well to initiate an internal review as soon as a single instance of plagiarism was discovered. Here is the Times Note:

On Aug. 7, we published a letter from Zachary Townsend, a student at Brown University and a columnist for the student newspaper, about Japan’s role in sex slavery in World War II, and slavery in the world today. We have now learned that the letter included material taken without attribution from an article in the November/December 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs, “The New Global Slave Trade,” by Ethan B. Kapstein.
The student newspaper, The Brown Daily Herald, said in an editors’ note on Monday that it had discovered after a review that several of Mr. Townsend’s columns had included material taken from other sources without attribution and that he had been dismissed as a columnist.
Reached by e-mail on Tuesday about his letter in The Times, Mr. Townsend said he had read the Foreign Affairs article but had not intended to plagiarize from it.
Had we known of the unattributed material, we would not have published Mr. Townsend’s letter.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged , , , | Comments

Plagiarism and fabrication at the News Leader

October 26, 2007 – 6:00 am

Blair J. Parker, 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.”
Parker was suspended last week after a story she wrote was revealed to have been made up of parts plagiarized from at least five different sources. One top of that, “Only one source was clearly real and correctly identified, and he disputes the quote attributed to him.”
This could be a record for the number of plagiarized sources contained in one article. A column from the paper’s executive editor describes how that then led to a larger investigation:

Following that first revelation, we began to dig deeper into Parker’s work. On Friday, Oct. 19, we realized that a community profile she had written — and which had been prepared for Friday publication before Thursday’s revelations — also was suspect. The story profiled Andrew Koch and identified him as a University of Virginia student and a Cavaliers fan. A photo was included. At 8:52 a.m. someone who identified himself as Andrew Koch came onto our newspaper forums and said that while his name and photo were used on the profile, he was not a University of Virginia student, a Cavalier’s fan and he had not vacationed in Cancun. He said that despite the use of his name and image, he was not the subject of the article. He said the photo was identical to one on a website at James Madison University, where he works. We could not locate a student Andrew Koch at U.Va. and on Saturday (Oct. 20) ran a correction stating that the profile was false.

The editor then details four more incidents of plagiarism and/or fabrication. Parker has owned up to her transgressions. “When asked about the problems in the deer-hunting story on Thursday, Parker told Publisher Roger Watson and me that she took full responsibility for her actions,” writes David Frtiz. “On Tuesday, she admitted the other fabrications and offered no explanation.”
He concludes with an apology:

So I apologize to you for the actions of our reporter. Our goal from the first sign of wrongdoing was to quickly and transparently understand the scope of the problem and to take firm action. It’s our responsibility to our readers. I also apologize that we didn’t figure it out sooner.

Here are two corrections published by the paper before it fired Parker:

The reporting for a local profile on Page A4 Friday cannot be verified. The photo that ran with it is of an Andrew Koch, but that Andrew Koch was not interviewed for the piece. Because of this, we retract the entire profile. The work of Blair J. Parker, the reporter who prepared the profile, is under review by The News Leader. That section of A4 was prepared early on Thursday, before questions were raised about her other work. More information will be released once the investigation is complete. Link

A Thursday B1 story about the fall deer and trout seasons by Blair J. Parker was plagiarized from several sources. We have confirmed that large portions of the story came from other sources and that facts within the story were incorrect, thus we retract the article in its entirety.
We are beginning a thorough investigation of Parker’s work since she joined the newspaper in 2006. Plagiarism and knowingly publishing inaccurate information violates The News Leader’s Principles of Ethical Conduct, a commitment to you that we take very seriously. We will report our findings once the investigation is complete
— David Fritz, executive editor Link

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Fabrication, Major Errors, Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged , | Comments

Guardian apologizes for plagiarizing from Russian newspaper

August 21, 2007 – 8:00 am

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. We should not have used material from the Exile in our introduction without quoting and crediting it properly and we apologise to the Exile for this error. (The richer they come. . ., page 7, G2, July 7). Link

That’s plagiarism. So how did it happen? Was any disciplinary action taken? One would expect more than a regular correction for something of this nature.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged | Comments Off

Paper fires reporter for “self-plagiarism”

August 21, 2007 – 8:00 am

Romenesko spotted a strange case of “self-plagiarism” yesterday: a reporter for the Explorer, weekly paper in Arizona, was fired after he/she was 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. From the paper:

The EXPLORER newsroom has been coming to grips with this over the past several days after discovering that a staffer engaged in an act that can best be described as self-plagiarism.
The story that appeared in last week’s paper about pet accommodations at the Loews Ventana Canyon Resort was a recycled work.
The employee, who is no longer employed here, originally wrote it for a college journalism class and presented it as new material. While the story received marginal updating, the staffer retained quotes from the original piece. The concierge quoted in the story no longer works at the resort. The story accurately reflected that another source for the original story is now working in a different department at the resort.

Later in the article:

What happened to us, and to you, last week was a breach of trust on several levels — first in the relationship between a writer and the
editors, then in the relationship between this newspaper and the readers who invite us into their homes every week.
And in the news business, trust isn’t just earned once. Every week, we put our credibility on the line.
We’ve reviewed the editing process, and there really was nothing that would have told us that there was a factual problem with this story — no quotes that seemed “too good,” nothing seeming out of place.
So where do we go from here?
We will review other stories this person has written for us, and if further correcfions are needed, we will publish them.
We have also talked with the news staff this week and explained that this kind of performance is intolerable.
We apologize. We got it wrong in a big way by the standards of a community newspaper, and we are sorry. We can and will do better.

As we’ve previously explained, it’s important that the paper name the offending reporter.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged | Comments Off

Sounds like plagiarism to us…

May 21, 2007 – 8:00 am

Some portions of an article about Hollywood romantic comedies (Boy meets girl: it always ends in tears, Screen, May 10) should have been attributed to Joe Neumaier in a New York Daily News article on the same subject from January 28, 2007.
We regret the error Link

And Joe Neumaier agrees this is plagiarism. He contacted the Times to object to the theft of his work, and he also forwarded one of his letters to Romenesko. The Times’ response appears to be entirely inadequate in this matter. It needs to formally name the reporter responsible (Ian Johns) and investigate their previous work for other examples of plagiarism. And it should offer a proper apology to Neumaier. His letter:

To Whom It May Concern:

I’m the Sunday Features Editor with the New York Daily News, and read this story link via MovieCityNews.com.
However, I believe a piece from Ian Johns in the Times of London (online edition), May 10, 2007, is, in part, a plagiarizing of a story I wrote in the Daily News published Jan. 28, 2007 (see attachment), in which my lede was: “If the current state of romantic comedy films could be summed up by a self-help book, here’s a suggested title: ‘We’re Just Not That Into You Anymore.’ ”

Writer Ian Johns’ lede: “If the current state of romantic comedy films could be summed up by a self-help book, a suggested title might be: We’re Just Not Connecting Any More.”

Later, I wrote, “…audiences and romantic comedies are going through a bad patch, and it’ll take more than a pint of Haagen-Dazs and a crying jag to forget …”Must Love Dogs” (John Cusack is neutered by Diane Lane)…”

Mr. Johns: “It’ll take more than a pint of Haagen-Dazs to forget the joylessness of Must Love Dogs (John Cusack neuters Diane Lane) and Failure to Launch (Sarah Jessica Parker nudges slacker Matthew McConaughey from his parents’ home).”

There are other similarities in tone and word usage. Simply lifting a quote from the industry analyst I used in my piece and attributing that as “…told the Daily News…” is insufficient. (Per Mr. Johns’ piece: ‘According to Robert Bucksbaum, of the US box-office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations, romantic comedies have gone off-track. As he told the New York Daily News recently: “The genre’s hokey now, which is why a film like The 40-Year-Old Virgin felt new. It was a movie made for men that women also wanted to see. That may be the way of the future: unless these films have got another attraction, they’re going to be a tough sell.’)

I expect an explanation, and expected more from the Times of London.

Joe Neumaier
Sunday Features Editor/Feature Film Writer
New York Daily News

Thanks for the tip, Jessica!

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Plagiarism knows no age

April 27, 2007 – 8:00 am

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

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Plagiarism at the Daily Pennsylvanian

April 24, 2007 – 8:00 am

IvyGate has the details on an incident of plagiarism at the Daily Pennsylvanian, a student newspaper. It also previously reported on an incident at the Yale Daily News. From IvyGate:

The DP fired columnist Jamie France ‘10 this weekend after her column on caffeine Friday bore uncanny similarities to a Yahoo! Food piece from March. The former ticks off facts on Diet Coke, Water Joe, Red Bull, Tab Energy, Enviga, Rocket Chocolates, Starbucks and Spike Shooter; the latter ticks off facts on Diet Coke, Water Joe, Red Bull, Tab Energy, Enviga, Rocket Chocolates, Starbucks and Spike Shooter.
Five health benefits are duplicated, too. And all those things are given in the exact same order, the odds of which occurring naturally are one in (math nerds, speak up) 6,227,020,800….less than 24 hours later, France was canned. “While we still believe that she did complete other research to get her information, the similarities in writing style and structure are too noticeable to ignore,” Tillman emailed us. “The DP does not tolerate plagiarism in any form, and we’re currently discussing implementing more in-depth workshops on these issues for staff in the future.”

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged | Comments

NY Sun names fired CBS producer; why naming her is important

April 12, 2007 – 10:00 am

After many blogs (Gawker, TV Newser etc.) put out calls for the name of the CBS producer fired this week for plagiarism, David Blum has named her in a story in today’s New York Sun. “In an era when plagiarists get dismissed and outed weekly by their employers at news organizations around the country, the decision by CBS News not to disclose the producer’s name — and to call an act of flagrant plagiarism an ‘omission’ — seems curious at best,” he writes, correctly. Our background and concerns are here. Then he reveals the name:

…her name is Melissa McNamara, a cbsnews.com Web producer (and herself a blogger for cbsnews.com) who joined the network in October 2005 after working as a news assistant in the Washington bureau of the New York Times and as a researcher at CNN.

Some may wonder why fellow journalists think it’s important to name the person. There are three reasons:

  1. It’s the industry standard. Have a look through our annual plagiarism round-ups on the right hand column of this website. The person is named the vast majority of the time. Even student newspapers do it. Criticism inevitably follows when plagiarists aren’t named.
  2. It’s a necessary act of disclosure. Because, for example, the press would seek to name a congressional staffer who commits a serious ethical lapse, we have to meet the same standard. We disclosure disclose the wrongdoing of people on a daily basis and hold them up to public scrutiny and scorn. Some of these people are public figures; some are not. When a journalism institution suffers an ethical or professional lapse of this nature, we must disclose the details. When we don’t, we perpetrate a double standard.
  3. It provides accountability for the plagiarist. By not naming the offender, CBS was creating the possibility for this person to apply for new jobs without having to disclose this incident. We’re not saying she should be banned from journalism for life; but she shouldn’t be able to gloss over an incident of plagiarism or ignore it completely. Her name needs to be public in order to ensure other journalism organizations are aware of whom they’re dealing with. Again, we want to emphasize we’re not suggesting she should never work in the biz again; that depends on how she handles this incident and works to ensure it never happens again. But potential employers have a need and right to know this about her.

Unfortunately, CBS hit several wrong notes with its handling of this incident. It was not forthcoming and clear in its presentation of the plagiarism; it refused to provide essential details to Public Eye, an internal site explicitly created to “bring transparency to the editorial operations of CBS News”; and it refused to name the offender. At this point, we hope this episode becomes a learning experience and impetus for change at CBS. And that appears to be the case, at least according to a New York Times article from today:

CBS News said yesterday it planned to install a new level of editorial oversight to its Web site since revelations that the CBS anchor Katie Couric read a plagiarized commentary on the site last week.

Unfortunately, the article doesn’t offer any further details. It does say that “…CBS said yesterday it was investigating to see if the producer…had written any previous commentaries for Ms. Couric that had been plagiarized.” This is an important, necessary step. Let’s hope CBS delivers a full report on its findings and reveals the new level of oversight.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Online, Plagiarism, Regret Articles, Television | Also tagged , | Comments Off

CBS News fires producer for plagiarism

April 11, 2007 – 8:00 am

A producer at CBS News has been fired after plagiarizing from the Wall Street Journal for a video essay on “Couric & Co.,” the Katie Couric/group blog on the CBS News website. AP reports the essay was removed and an editor’s note has been placed on the site. We searched the blog in question — and the entire site — and weren’t initially able to locate it, which was frustrating. Then we found it and a bit of explanation via the CBS Public Eye blog:

Correction: The April 4 Notebook was based on a “Moving On” column by Jeffrey Zaslow that ran in The Wall Street Journal on March 15 with the headline, “Of the Places You’ll Go, Is the Library Still One of Them?” Much of the material in the Notebook came from Mr. Zaslow, and we should have acknowledged that at the top of our piece. We offer our sincere apologies for the omission.

There are obvious problems with this. First, it’s labeled as an editor’s note at the top of the post and then noted as a correction in the body. These are very different things. Which is it? Also, if this was a firing offense, the editor’s note/correction should explain the disciplinary action taken. This is a case of plagiarism, not omission. That’s why the producer was fired. CBS should speak in plain terms and offer more explanation.
Finally, the editor’s note was put online on April 9, yet the editor’s note/correction is dated April 4. This is likely to replace the offending post, which appeared on the 4th. But back-dating the post means it wasn’t on the front page of the blog on the day it appeared. The result is that visitors who saw the original essay are less likely to come upon this important information.

It’s good to see the Public Eye blog make note of this incident. But it appears that CBS execs aren’t willing to offer any further explanation. “Mike Sims, director of News and Operations for CBSNews.com,
declined to comment about the specifics of the matter,” wrote Public Eye editor Brian Montopoli. He then quotes Sims saying, “The Editor’s
Note speaks for itself.” Yet Sims was happy to offer comment for a different Public Eye post the day before. This (lack of) exchange seems contrary to the stated purpose of Public Eye:

Public Eye’s fundamental mission is to bring transparency to the editorial operations of CBS News — transparency that is unprecedented for broadcast and online journalism.

CBS News execs should be required to offer an explanation to Public Eye. Strangely, the AP story gets quotes and details not offered to Public Eye. This undercuts the importance and efficacy of Public Eye, which should be of concern to CBS.

Let’s hope this incident will inspire CBS to create an online corrections page and policy. We asked Public Eye a little over a year ago about the lack of one and were told by a CBS online exec — the same Mike Sims — that it was being considered and they were “trying to find the best way” to create one. We suggest taking a look at what ESPN did to create a cross-platform corrections policy and online page.
From AP:

A CBS News producer was fired and the network apologized after a Katie Couric video essay on libraries was found to be plagiarized from The Wall Street Journal...
An editor for The Wall Street Journal called CBS News to point out the similarities of the April 4 notebook item to Zaslow’s article, headlined “Of the Places You’ll Go, Is the Library Still One of Them?”
The pieces talk about how libraries are seen differently by children from their parents.
“We were horrified,” CBS News spokeswoman Sandra Genelius said. “It was almost verbatim.”
CBS would not identify the producer fired for the transgression.

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Times editor’s note about “resemblances” between essays

March 26, 2007 – 8:00 am

Is it plagiarism or just a remarkable coincidence? Give a read for yourself:

An essay in the Book Review on March 4, “Confessions of a Book Abuser,” by Ben Schott, defended the ways people physically “mistreat” books. Readers have subsequently pointed out a number of resemblances between Schott’s essay and “Never Do That to a Book,” an essay on the same subject by Anne Fadiman that was part of her 1998 book “Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader.”

Among several thematic similarities that readers commented on are references to a system of dog-earing pages either at the top or at the bottom depending on referential purpose and to travelers who rip previously read sections from paperbacks and discard them before boarding an airplane. But the most striking resemblance occurs in the opening lines of each essay. Schott’s begins: “I have to admit I was flattered when, returning to my hotel room on the shores of Lake Como, a beautiful Italian chambermaid took my hand. . . . Escorting me to the edge of the crisply made bed, the chambermaid pointed to a book on my bedside table. ‘Does this belong to you?’ she asked. I looked down to see a dog-eared copy of Evelyn Waugh’s ‘Vile Bodies’ open spread-eagle, its cracked spine facing out. ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Sir, that is no way to treat a book!’ she declared, stalking out of the room.”

Fadiman’s essay begins: “When I was 11 and my brother was 13, our parents took us to Europe. At the Hôtel d’Angleterre in Copenhagen, as he had done virtually every night of his literate life, Kim left a book facedown on the bedside table. The next afternoon, he returned to find the book closed, a piece of paper inserted to mark the page, and the following note, signed by the chambermaid, resting on its cover:

“Sir, you must never do that to a book.”

Questioned about the similarities, Schott, who has recently been contributing freelance work to The Times, said that he had never
read Fadiman’s essay before it was brought to his attention, also by a reader of the Book Review, and suggested that the thematic resemblances were a coincidental result of the narrowness of the topic. He maintains that the encounter with the Italian chambermaid took place as he described it, in 1989, when he was 15.

Had editors been aware of Fadiman’s essay, the Book Review would not have published Schott’s. Link

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors, Newspapers, Plagiarism | Also tagged | Comments Off

NY Times letter writer accidentally plagiarizes from Times story

March 12, 2007 – 8:00 am

An Editor’s Note. See this similar, though much more serious incident.

A letter in most editions yesterday, by Syed Waris Shere, writing from Brooklyn, discussed Vice President Dick Cheney and the verdict in the trial of I. Lewis Libby Jr.
After the newspaper started printing, the letter was posted on our Web site, where an alert reader, to whom we are extremely grateful, noticed that almost all of the letter had been copied from an article about Mr. Cheney and the trial
from the previous day’s newspaper. The letter included parts of sentences written by a Times reporter and sentences taken from quotations in the article.
Mr. Shere said by telephone yesterday that he had intended to attribute all the copied passages in the letter, and regrets not having done so.
As soon as we learned of the problem, we removed the letter from our Web site, and from remaining copies of the paper that had not yet been printed. Link

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