Someone To Watch Over You (Plagiarist Edition)
By Mitch Berg
Kate Parry, the Strib’s institutional self-justification specialist “Reader’s Representative”, writes about the Strib plagiarism scandal. Sort of:
The review, which began Thursday, is being conducted by a team working with Sandy Date, director of news research, and Rob Daves, director of strategic research.
Rob Daves? The majordomo of the Minnesota Poll, either the most inaccurate poll in the world or the most finely-tuned partisan tool in the media? Some investigation that’ll be. “Steve Berg founded New Yorker”.
Their charge is to examine the body of Berg’s work since January 2006 and determine if there are further similarities with other writers’ work. “We’ve been asked to move very quickly, but we’ve also been told the quality and accuracy of our work is paramount,” Daves said.
The jokes write themselves, sometimes.
During the two years I’ve been in this job, several times readers have pointed out what appears to them to be plagiarism by reporters and metro columnists. Sometimes, but not always, the allegations come from those who disagree with a columnist’s political views and know a plagiarism charge that sticks can severely damage a career.
Kate Parry – don’t you rely on that “our critics are partisans” schtick a bit much?
The stakes have never been higher for newspapers’ credibility. Some talk radio and blog commentators eager to win over newspaper readers and the advertising dollars that follow them delight in exploiting accusations of unethical behavior by journalists.
But others raise legitimate issues.
Actually, we bloggers and talk hosts raise legitimate issues – and as convenient as it may be to Parry to chalk the issues up to partisan sniping or moneygrubbing, the fact is that without us to call the public’s attention to the Strib’s many problems, Kate Parry certainly never would.
It’s important for newspapers to resist becoming so jaded about the partisan edges of so much media criticism that they fail to act on serious questions about ethics.
When Kate Parry ascribes nearly all criticism to partisan edges, what does “cynicism” mean anymore?
Then factor in the ease the Internet has brought to making publications worldwide available at the click of a mouse, exploding the amount of information at our fingertips and also making it easier than ever to sniff out plagiarism.
In that atmosphere, the last thing this newspaper should do is hand eager critics more ammo to keep firing away at problems resulting from sloppy research and writing.
If all of that still isn’t enough to make every writer in the building appropriately obsessive and even a bit paranoid about annotating notes and meticulously attributing words that didn’t originate in their brains, it should be.
And, um, it has been for about ten years.
Here’s a quick preview of a core lesson from that upcoming seminar: Plagiarism embarrasses the whole journalistic community and can derail promising careers.
But before you get to that ugly extreme, Kate Parry will be there to turn white into black in your defense.
