National Post: Plagiarism is Okay Because Free Press is Accountable to No One
High-profile Globe & Mail columnist Margaret Wente, whose habitual plagiarizing made the news this week after her employer tried unsucessfully to dismiss allegations by bloggers, has picked up yet another defender from amongst the bloated, hypocritical ranks of the professional media circus. This time it’s a third-rate, shit-peddling moron at the National Post who goes by the name of Terence Corcoran:
Canadian journalism… will soon be held hostage by dreary dictatorial avatars of pretentious rules and political correctness.
[Margaret Wente's] major alleged crime against journalism was to fail to put quotation marks around somebody else’s words, something that is now defined in the blogosphere as plagiarism…
There’s nothing wrong with criticizing writers, but there is a problem when outsiders can use artificial structures to suppress and control those writers. Journalists are increasingly at the mercy of a “public editor.”
Oh, sweet Christ. The blogosphere didn’t “define” plagiarism. Plagiarism was already defined for us, when we went to school. I know you went to a second-rate institution with the endearing nickname of Last Chance U (full disclosure: so did I), but I’m sure it must have come up even there. It’s a fairly simple principle: if you’re using someone else’s words, attribute them. You seem to think this is some random, arbitrary, unfair principle. It isn’t. You’re a newspaper columnist. The sole reason you get paid is because people (apparently) want to know what you have to say. If you’re printing words that were actually written by someone else, and then getting paid for them… are you honestly telling me you see no problem with this?
The most disturbing part of it all, though, is the sneering condescension. What Corcoran is telling us, and he hasn’t been the only one in recent days, is that the media is accountable to no one. It will make — and break — its own rules. Readers have no right to expect that when they open the Globe & Mail or the National Post, the words they find there were actually penned by a professional journalist rather than copied-and-pasted from some random website because the reporter in question was too lazy to do their damned job.
And, according to Corcoran, for me to say otherwise is to engage in “suppression” of free speech. It is to engage in an assault on this country’s cherished freedoms. It is to… what did he compare it to again? Oh, yes, here’s what Terence Corcoran of the National Post says it feels like to be subject to a rule that you’re not allowed to rip off other people’s work and present it as your own:
something of what it felt like during the Cultural Revolution in China, when ideological enforcers roamed the country to impose their views and expose running-dogs, remove people from their jobs and purge them.
Fuck you.
If this is honestly the best you can come up, then the only meaningful contribution you have left to make to the discussion would be a carefully written letter of resignation. Preferably one that you didn’t plagiarize from a career advice website.
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Jymn
Let them shoot themselves in the feet. It will all come back to haunt them. Such rank dishonesty and defense of the indefensible is classic narcissism, as practiced by so many in our privileged media class.
Books will be written about this very moment in journalistic time. We are in the eye of history. Time has a way of uncovering the truth. The National Post is riding the moment, so verklempt are they over the attention social media is getting. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.
Jymn
Let them shoot themselves in the feet. It will all come back to haunt them. Such rank dishonesty and defense of the indefensible is classic narcissism, as practiced by so many in our privileged media class.
Books will be written about this very moment in journalistic time. We are in the eye of history. Time has a way of uncovering the truth. The National Post is riding the moment, so verklempt are they over the attention social media is getting. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.
Fred
It’s not ‘Last Chance U’, it’s ‘Cartoon U’.
signed
A Cartoonian.
Sam Gunsch
re SE headline: “…Because Free Press is Accountable to No One”
That nails it.
Wente and Corcoran are only a couple examples of the worst that the MSM offers up.
re accountability… You might appreciate Jay Rosen’s comments about the media in the USA and generally in across their political system in this passionate and cutting interview here:
http://www.radioopensource.org/jay-rosen-on-our-media-malaise-who-will-tell-the-people/
Rosen excerpt: “And it’s that group of people that still has a hold on the political conversation, even though fewer people believe them or pay attention or rely on them. And so the alternative to a reality-based politics, which we do not have, is just a huge increase in cynicism.”
http://www.radioopensource.org/jay-rosen-on-our-media-malaise-who-will-tell-the-people/
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Canada has been going down this sinkhole with them. As you’ve often reported, our nation’s rightwing media are doing a terrible job of covering reality… I think they are just simply a danger to democracy at present.
mike knox
You know, his article got me thinking about this issue
The Toronto columnist’s major alleged crime against journalism was to fail to put quotation marks around somebody else’s words, something that is now defined in the blogosphere as plagiarism.
The journalistic crimes Ms. Wente is accused of are petty, insignificant allegations that are mostly matters of technique and perhaps sloppiness on her part.
What we have in the Wente case is journalism ethics imposed by university academics in a field — journalism — that is a trade rather than an academic discipline.
To quote Mr Corcoran, at his succinct best, “…the…”
Sincerely
M Knox
Skinny Dipper
I will suggest that if people want to leave a comment under Wente’s column, just type “Ignore.”
jrkrideau
@Mike Knox.
Actually it is far more serious than you state. Read some of the many links that SE has posted above. This is more than one minor error. She has a long record of stealing other people’s work.
One column with a problem is not serious. Anyone can make a mistake and forget a set of quotation marks or an attribution. One apologizes, give credit, and goes on. Serial plagiarism and misconduct is not a mistake. At best it illustrates complete incompetence or worse, a complete disregard for normal standards and ethics in journalism.
Plagiarism in the case of a columnist is fraud and theft.
Fraud, in that the author is clamming that they did the basic research, developed the line of thought and wrote the words. The author is presenting themself as having produced an original work that has value.
I assume that a newspaper wants someone who actually can do this. Not someone who can, somewhat incompetently, copy other peoples work.
It is theft because it is stealing credit for the work from the original author. In some jobs, journalism, academic research, the arts, a large part of one’s reputation and often income depends on name recognition or one’s work portfolio. You need to be able to show, by letters to the editor, citation lists, or art reviews that you are having an impact. If some one steals your work then they steal the credit.
If a co-worker of mine comes up with a brilliant new idea or innovative way of dealing with a problem and I casually steal the idea and take it to the boss I’m stealing from the co-worker. Heck, with any luck I get the promotion.
You also need to have a look at the other standards that Wente shows. She has been reported as using bad numbers, more or less inventing interviewees, misreporting facts, and so on.
Corcoran and some of the other commentators who seem to be defending Wente either had not read the other Media Culpa posts (or a number of other commentators discussing problems with the columns) which strikes me as journalistic incompetence or they are ignoring a long list of transgressions which strikes me as dishonest.
High school students and first year college/university student are fairly rigourously trained not to defraud and steal, sorry, plagiarize.
An experienced journalist should have no problem remembering the rules.
jrkrideau
Blast, that italic went viral! Sorry.
Rab
I wrote off Corcoran as a bag man hack way back in 1988. That time, he wrote a puff piece in the Report on Business where he claimed Michael DeGroote, ex-CEO of Laidlaw, hadn’t committed a crime when he sold Laidlaw shares just before a horrendous earnings number.
Actually, it’s called Insider Trading Terry. DeGroote subsequently gave back his $23 Million in profits in a plea deal with the OSC but never had to admit to any wrongdoing or serve time. Way to enforce the law OSC!
I wonder when people will realize that journalists are accountable, but just not to the readers. Corporate advertisers pay the bills and are the real bosses.
Journalists are like prostitutes that are hired by someone else and paid to pretend to be your lover.
Assholes.
Sixth Estate
jrkrideau — Thanks for laying it out clearly. Do you mind if I quote a large chunk of that in the body of a future post? (If I’m feeling nice, I may even attribute it, but I’m also trying to make Sixth Estate more journalistic, and of course that means absolute freedom to plagiarize…
).
Rab — If you’re looking for quality, critical work, you’re going to have to write up a much longer blacklist than just Terry. The Post’s record on climate change, for instance, is abominable, and the Globe has more than its share of “don’t worry, nothing really happened” columns along the lines that you describe, too.
What worried me in this particular case wasn’t that I disliked Corcoran’s opinion… it was that his opinion is that apparently normal rules of conduct no longer apply to the media, and that to even say they should is morally wrong and equivalent to placing the media under the repression of the Cultural Revolution.
mike knox
@jrkrideau
When I linked thru to (and read) Corcoran’s “article”, I decided he needed to be hoist on his own petard.
My reply (shown above) consists of three sentences from his article, cut, pasted and unattributed (oh! obviously my error!). I thought that the quote I did attribute (“…the…”) would give my game away.
I am hoist on my own petard!
M Knox
thwap
Haven’t read Corcoran in ages. He’s still a useless lying hack I see.
Rab
I don’t read “news-papers” anymore. My wife still wants the Globe for the Style section so we subscribe, although even she says its’ going downhill.
I read the comics and obituaries, so maybe that counts. Once upon a time I even wrote letters to the editor, until I realized it made as much sense as shouting at the TV, and was probably less effective.
Sixth Estate
As decrepit as the media establishment may be, I still have to get my news from somewhere.
E.C. Drury
Thank you for putting into words what I am too angry to articulate at the moment.
jrkrideau
@ Mike Knox.
Oops, didn’t run a plagarism check ! I had seen several defences of Wente in the same fashion and didn’t catch the irony. Sorry but on the other hand, I make be hitting the big time if SE does cite me.
@Sixth Estate
Please feel free to use it–and clean up punctuation & spelling too. . A cite is always appreciated.
I had been vaguely thinking about how to explain some of the seriousness of plagiarism to students, not that I teach, and putting it in terms of theft and fraud seems a valid way to approach it since all it is is a subset of those two crimes.
Dr.Dawg
Your slap at Carleton took the shine off an otherwise excellent post.
Carleton was nicknamed “Last Chance U.” for a very good reason. It offered relatively easy entrance requirements that permitted folks (like me) who had foundered in other schools to have a last shot.
Once admitted, however, we had to prove ourselves–as the saying went, Carleton was an easy place to get into, but a hard place to get out of (with a degree, that is).
The fact that the execrable Corcoran made it in traditional journalism way back when puts into some question the notion of recently slipping standards. But Carleton is not accountable for his character flaws.
Sixth Estate
I have a degree from Carleton myself, Dr Dawg. Although I suppose without knowing that, readers could certainly take it as an excessively gratuitous slur. You have my apologies.
Corcoran from Carleton, Wente from U of T. It’s the same critique. And no, Carleton is not accoutable for the achievements of its students in a direct way. It’s just that, yet again, we have a university graduate who appears to be claiming that plagiarism is a recent invention.