The Daily Beast has accepted the resignation of Gerald Posner, its chief investigative reporter, after Posner admitted (in a somewhat weaselly way) to plagiarism. ("…I admitted [the five articles] met the definition of plagiarism and I accepted full responsibility for that error, an incident I called “accidental plagiarism.” ")
In this blog post, he explains that although technically he is a plagiarist, it’s really the fault of the Internet and its “warp speed,” along with the many articles he was tasked to write. This warp speed and deadline pressure caused him to create “master files” of information which then were distilled into his articles, and which “inadvertently” permitted “…already published sources to get through to a number of my final [drafts].”
There are a number of additional examples here from Slate, although I think one of them is a trifle thin. If you’re getting a quote from someone who has sent out a press release, you’re getting the same verbiage that other reporters are and are certainly entitled to use it without crediting another reporter. But the others seem pretty solid, with nearly identical sentences.
Harsh words for Posner from Slate’s Jack Shafer:
Are we moving towards treating plagiarism as not so much of a big deal? The first reaction from Daily Beast editors was to keep Posner; his resignation was accepted only after additional question materials was brought to light. Not to mix apples with… other, younger apples… but the attitude of many current high schoolers and college students seems somewhat lacksadasical on the improtance of avoiding plagiarism.
Has cut-and-paste, plus instant availability of lots of different source material, fundamentally changed our perception of plagiarism? Or will it, down the road?
Has cut-and-paste, plus instant availability of lots of different source material, fundamentally changed our perception of plagiarism? Or will it, down the road?
And should it?
But seriously, Posner is just blowing smoke here. You can’t just say, “Oh, I plagiarized because it’s just too hard writing on the internet without plagiarizing.” If he really couldn’t handle the pressure of writing online columns, or if he was so disorganized by the time pressure that he couldn’t tell the difference between his own work and other people’s articles, he shouldn’t be writing online columns in the first place. If it’s that hard to write under time constraints without plagiarism, how do other people manage to do it?
And, when I read your post title quickly, I thought you wrote that Richard Posner had committed plagiarism, so that took me aback for a second.
I don’t know that college and high school students are any different from their forebears when it comes to plagiarism, although the act of Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V is easier than copying out of a dictionary or a source book. I remember more than one English teacher explaining to my class what was plagiarism and what wasn’t. I’m pretty sure people got caught anyway.
Do readers care about this one way or the other? I don’t know. I think academics and authors care more about plagiarism than the public does, for the most part. Particularly if we are talking about research and not ripping off works of fiction. We’ve had this argument here and it’s always the same: ‘if you as a writer are getting the information from somewhere else,’ the question goes, ‘why does it matter if you put it in your own words or the other person’s?’
All that said, is it possible Posner made the errors he described in the way he described, and did it by accident? Maybe. If he was organizing the research the way he says he was, he was really begging for this to happen. I was going to say this is a shame for JFK assassination research, but…
Uh, no, plagiarizers do not typically have a carefully organized plan to commit their unethical activities. They are fundamentally lazy, whether you’re talking about high school students or (formerly) respected journalists. They commit “accidental plagiarism” because they don’t take the time to carefully check their sources and verify that their writing is their own. The last thing they would bother to do is run their own work through plagiarism software.
While Posner’s explanation is plausible in theory, I note that Slate found four instances of plagiarism in one story he did. If that happened more than once it’s very hard to believe it could be an error. If it’s a bad week, maybe I can believe it. But it’s trivially easy to just put the other person’s words in italics so you can’t confuse your reference material with your own writing.
The only one that I think is debatable is the one containing the quote:
It’s not clear to me whether both sentences are derived from Professor Scharf’s comments, and how the AP and Posner got Scharf’s quote. But notice the AP doesn’t credit or attribute any source for the Scharf quote other than Scharf. So if Scharf’s quote came from a press release or publication of some kind from Scharf, one which both Posner and the AP had received, then Posner was not acting improperly.
His defense seems pretty weak. Honestly though, Posner’s style seems sort of ripe for this kind of thing. He always uses the weird, passive “The Daily Beast has learned…” thing, which even if he’s not plagiarizing is pretty sketchy. Presumably an Angel of the Lord didn’t appear in his room and tell him about CIA interrogation methods, for example, somewhere there’s a source. Even if he’s not just ripping of the AP, he, (and many other reporters who do the same thing) should have to actually say what their source is, even if its just in general terms to protect anonymity.
(Side nitpick: In case you are under the popular misapprehension otherwise, the construction “The Daily Beast has learned…” is not actually in the passive voice, as that technical term is used by syntacticians (an example of actually using the passive voice would be “It has been learned by The Daily Beast that…”). Indeed, as this very example helps demonstrate, whether it was or was not in the passive voice would be orthogonal to whether it was Posner’s style to conceal his sources.)
You can get coats these days with really big pockets, and stores carry lots more different kinds of stuff, so we shouldn’t have such negative impressions of shoplifting.
Especially dumbasses that are so lazy that they can’t be bothered to alter a word here and there. That’s how I’ve caught many college students plagiarizing. They steal entire essays, or big chunks of text, right off the internet and put their name on the first page. Apparently, they think I don’t use the same internet.
One or two tried to get by with changing every third or fourth word, but that didn’t help. I still caught the rest, and the substitute words they chose made no sense. So they spent more time but still got caught–and what they produced was mostly gibberish.
See this kinda highlights the problem I have with getting all up in arms about cases like this. Are we supposed to be punishing laziness, or the theft of ideas? Presumably, you would be okay with your students going on the internet, reading the same material, then relying on said material to write their essay, right? If that is the case, why is the transparent theft of ideas a fundamentally different crime than blatant theft? I could understand if a teacher takes issue with a students plagiarizing because doing so would allow the student to avoid developing an actual understanding topic at hand. My problem with using plagiarism as a means for determining competence is that it is not a good indicator of a student’s underlying comprehension. Particularly when the crime consists of a few short sentences that primarily serve to convey factual details. Would rephrasing those passages change the fact that concept of “ownership of ideas” has been undermined?
The strength of our reaction to plagiarism should be dependent upon the originality of the source material, the consequences on the “victim”, and the effects the deception has on the reader. In this case, I don’t think the passages lifted were particularly unique, the original author has not been harmed to any great extent, and the reader is likely no better off knowing where the original material came from.
Generally, the problem with being so parochial and rigid about plagiarism is the hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance that comes with overestimating the frequency and importance of original thoughts, and embracing a system of scholarship that is reliant upon, and encourages using, citing, and building upon the work of others. Does anyone really think most high school students have any “original” ideas about Shakespeare or the Spanish-American war? The vast majority or just regurgitating the ideas and thoughts of other scholars; albeit (usually) in their own words. Sadly, the majority of exercises given as homework in schools induce, and tacitly condone plagiarism. It’s like when interviewer ask you what your greatest weaknesses are. Does anyone really expect an honest answer?
The same applies newspaper articles; which often just rephrase AP, Reuters, or NYT articles. Most people are ok with above, but pitch a fit when some guy steals something verbatim (no matter how small or inconsequential).
It’s not. The problem is you’re using someone else’s ideas without giving them credit. If I find an essay and rewrite it in my own words, and then don’t cite it, I’m still plagiarizing it. When you copy it verbatim, that just makes your plagiarism easier to catch.
Of course, as T.S. Elliot said “Mediocre writers borrow; great writers steal”.
