Plagiarism. Is it always obvious?
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- May
- 19
During summer of 1991, the New York Times reported on allegations that a Boston University dean had plagiarized an article by a PBS film critic for a graduation speech.
There was one problem.
The article itself plagiarized—from the Boston Globe.
”(T)he Times article included a passage of five paragraphs that closely resembled five paragraphs in the Globe article,” read the Times Editor’s Note of July 11, 1991. “The passage involved comparisons of the same set of quotations from the disputed texts. Although the Times article also reflected independent investigation of the controversy and interviews by the Times reporter, it was in this instance improperly dependent on the Globe account.”
Today my column is about plagiarism in the Ossining schools. Some cases are very straight forward, others less so and as the Times example shows, even professionals can get tripped up.
This entry was posted
on Monday, May 19th, 2008 at 5:39 pm by Noreen O'Donnell.
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It may not be exactly plagiarism, but what do we call it when liberal newspaper columnists recycle press-releases from advocacy groups with whom they agree, and turn them into columns?
“Modern journalism,” perhaps?