How the Media Should Handle a Plagiarism Scandal
In recent days I’ve done what I can to show readers how horrendously the national media is coping with the news that one of its own, accomplished Globe & Mail columnist Margaret Wente, plagiarizes in her columns. It hasn’t been pretty. First, the Globe unsuccessfully tried to dismiss the accusations as the rantings of an anonymous blogger. Later, reporters from other media offered a wide range of excuses for Wente, ranging from the intriguing thesis that plagiarism is obsolete in the Internet age to the rather ridiculous claim that accusing a reporter of plagiarism is akin to the Maoist purges of the Cultural Revolution. It’s bad enough that I’ve started a link boycott of pro-plagiarism columnists, and I encourage other bloggers to join me in this protest.
However, I also want to highlight the ways in which it’s not all bad news. Some reporters — some rare few — have actually done their jobs over the last few days and, more importantly, have decided to put the reputation of their profession ahead of their desire to protect their own from public criticism. For instance, the CBC has taken the important step of publicly booting Wente from her position on a media panel while the allegations are investigated. The Globe & Mail, notably, did not announce anything of the kind, although the fact that Wente hasn’t published another column since a paranoid semi-apology several days ago may be an indication that she’s on some sort of leave.
Another thing the Globe didn’t do was to give a platform to the blogger at Media Culpa, an Ottawa art professor named Carol Wainio, to explain her views. (Instead, it apparently preferred to engage in cheap shots at her reputation, at least until this was no longer a tenable position.) In contrast, the National Post has done so. It’s highly recommended reading, because she explains her motives for going after Wente, and simply because the Post was willing to give her the space. A Toronto Star interview is also worth reading, for the same reason.
Finally, the Star is also to be commended for having its public editor publish a piece on plagiarism which at least appears to take the problem seriously. This of course stands in marked contrast to the Globe public editor’s attempt to downplay the allegations, and the National Post’s blatant lack of a public editor in the first place (because, according to one of its leading columnists, media accountability is an assault on freedom of the press). Kathy English lays out what she thinks are some of the key differences between how her office works at the Star, and how the public editor office works at the Globe & Mail.
Of course we shouldn’t kid ourselves about what’s going on here. The Globe’s decision to defend one of its high-profile columnists was sadly predictable. So is the willingness of the Globe’s competitors to slam it at any opportunity — and this is certainly the opportunity. The delayed response occurred because their instinct to rush in with swords drawn has been warring with a fear that there might be plagiarists in their own organizations who could be exposed. In contrast, the seemingly pro-plagiarism positions taken by people like Terence Corcoran at the Post and Jesse Brown at Maclean’s are at least principled, even if the principles they hold to are sometimes asinine and contemptible.
In the meantime, I await a full and sincere expression of contrition from Ms. Wente, one that doesn’t wander off into gratuitous attacks on her critics.
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Jymn
Keep waiting. I don’t think Wente will ever fully apologize. It’s not her style.
Also, it’s worth pointing out that Kathy English quickly corrected one her writer’s errors writing about Wente:
http://craigsilverman.tumblr.com/post/32514316757/a-important-missing-disclosure-in-my-toronto-star
“It was caught by Star public editor Kathy English and a editor’s note clarification is in today’s paper, on A2. We unfortunately couldn’t fix the print version because Insight is preprinted. It was caught before the column went online.”
Now, that’s what I call a professional Public Editor!
Deep Climate
To be fair, I think Wainio did have a letter published by G+M. And so far she has declined interviews by the MSM.
Having said that, how the Globe can claim using others’ exact words is somehow “paraphrasing” is beyond me.
jrkrideau
@Deep Climate
how the Globe can claim using others’ exact words is somehow “paraphrasing” is beyond me.
I don’t think even Wegman tried that excuse. Perhaps someone could suggest it to him.
bluemlein
I entered journalism in the early Sixties. I have always had a horror of mistakes occurring in print, because print does not go away – even when a paper folds – as a couple of my early berths have done – the record is on microfilm etc.
I have to say when a problem arises, nip it in the bud, over-apologize and go back to work. As a writer I had one correction, which my editor ran reluctantly because it actually was not an error so much as a misinterpretation by a political wife (whom I admired!) during an election campaign.
In my role as department editor I ran three corrections which were the result of incorrect information being given to us. It is not bragging but a demonstration of the expectation we all had that one had to get things right.
Sixth Estate
Which in my opinion could have been a way to handle the Wente affair (although from Media Culpa’s blog, it isn’t just one or two errors, but a pattern of errors).
Instead, the Globe initially tried to avoid any admission of wrongdoing whatever, and then allowed Wente to go on the attack against her critics; all the while, other journalists debated whether plagiarism was a legitimate charge in the first place.
I’d feel a lot better if the affair had been handled in the way you describe.
Looking for positive outcomes from plagiarism in the Margaret Wente affair
[...] Questions were raised by mainstream journalists, bloggers and hundreds of the readers of online stories, about whether Wente was guilty of plagiarism, and the behaviour of a number of Globe and Mail staff in responding to this allegation. These stories came out in publications that included Macleans, the Toronto Star, the National Post, and Toronto Life, and even the Guardian. Those asking questions included John Miller, a former dean of journalism at Ryerson, Elizabeth James with Vancouver’s North Shore News and the blogger at the Sixth Estate who wrote about How media should handle a plagiarism scandal [...]