The Ryan nomination is the latest shiny object for the Beltway media to follow, but there was another tragedy that occurred just before our blue-eyed savior rose from the streets. Poor Fareed Zakaria, who was apparently just had too much to do at Time, CNN and the Washington Post, got caught plagarizing from a Jill Leopore piece in the New Yorker. To me, the details are telling, because you can see that he took a paragraph from her piece and gave it a quick once-over to camouflage it. In other words, whatever you want to say about it, it’s intentional.
This is Fareed’s apology:
Media reporters have pointed out that paragraphs in my TIME column this week bear close similarities to paragraphs in Jill Lepore’s essay in the April 22nd issue of The New Yorker. They are right. I made a terrible mistake. It is a serious lapse and one that is entirely my fault. I apologize unreservedly to her, to my editors at TIME, and to my readers.
A “mistake” is locking your keys in the car. A “terrible mistake” is leaving one of your kids at a rest stop on a family vacation. Zakaria’s action is a mistake only if you think shoplifting and pick-pocketing are forms of error rather than theft.
Zakaria’s not the worst of the bunch by any stretch, but he’s certainly not immune from looking down from his position of prestige and influence and making harsh judgments about the common man. Yet his penalty–a one-month suspension–is like nothing when you consider that some universities will kick students out for a single instance of plagarism.
The stories written on Friday hinted that this isn’t the first instance of this, and I doubt it’s just my suspicious nature that makes me think that he just got sloppy in this one case and copied a little too freely from another mainstream publication. So maybe there’s more to come. If not, this will probably be just a bump in the road for someone who is the right kind of person and therefore could only have stolen accidentally.
Valdivia
I think I know exactly what happened here and explaining it will make it even worse so we are left with this apology which tells us nothing–the big (not-so)secret in DC and NYC pundit circles is that these major league writers have other people doing most of the writing for them. It’s either an intern from one of the top Universities (Harvard, Yale, etc) trying to start out with a famous writer to make it into the pundit class, or someone who is already a writer gets paid nothing and ghosts a lot of the pieces to supplement their income. Zakaria will write a lot of his own stuff but if he is producing 30 pieces a week some of the blog posts or pieces about breaking news will come from this other source. He probably read it, didn’t catch the plagiarized portion, and sent it. These guys should use the software professors use in Universities to catch this kind of stuff if they are going to outsource their writing to someone else.
But because no one talks in public about this, we will have a conversation about something else that is actually not what happened.
ETA: I have heard some grumbling that Zakaria used a commencement speech twice in two different places. I think saying this is plagiarism is stupid. It’s lazy and a grift, but not plagiarism. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the same person who wrote the gun piece for him did the same trick with other pieces.
Baud
I didn’t see anything wrong with Zakaria’s mea culpa. “Mistake” is an appropriate term IMHO.
@Valdivia:
If that’s right, then I’m a little surprised Zakaria didn’t throw the intern under the bus. Maybe using interns is a worse sin than plagiarism.
General Stuck
Poor Fareed, I always liked his viewpoint on things. But he is hardly the worst, like you say. The worst would be Barack Obama, by far, according to Rinse Repeat on MTP this morn.
Get that, he STOLE 700 billion, not merely cut medicare. After the seg, it took a full crew to wheel in and out Rinse’s 500 pound dog whistle/crime of the century.
amk
When compared to what the clown ass presstitudes do every day, what zak did is a pfft.
jrg
Thread needz moar troll!
If universities kick students out for plagiarism, What should have happened to Joe Biden?
brent
I don’t think there is anything wrong with the word “mistake” here. He is admitting that he did something wrong. That he had a lapse in judgement. “Mistake” is not really synonymous with “accident” which I think is what you are mistakenly suggesting here.
Valdivia
@Baud:
well people don’t pay Zakaria to have someone else write for him. The trick for these guys is to pretend to write everything they do, like some intellectual Uber-Mensch. So I really don’t think you will find anyone pulling the curtain on this one, but these kind of thing happens in every think tank in this town and in every magazine that publishes the big names (not The New Yorker though, or NYRB, since their ethos is more literary and they pay well)
Anya
I agree with @Baud: that his mea culpa was sufficient. He clearly took full responsibility and did not give lousy excuses like Maureen Dowd. When I read what Zakaria did, I really felt so disappointed. I liked his writing and agreed with most of his worldview, so it was really disappointing.
cmorenc
I’m both surprised and disappointed that Zakira is so red-handedly guilty of what at best is the sort of reckless sloppiness that undermines confidence in his journalistic integrity. I had always considered him one of the better, more substantive MSM journalists, rather than one of the superficial horse-race shamalysts horse-race commenters gladly repeating he said-she said partisan talking points (cause that requires little actual work). Apparently, Zakira cut some corners to save himself a bit of work too; why didn’t he simply give fair attribution?
cathyx
If Zakaria is putting his name at the end as if he wrote it, then he is responsible for the content. He can quietly fire the intern, but he has to take the blame for it.
Baud
@Valdivia:
I wish I could hire someone to do my job. :-(
Seriously, though, I don’t see a problem if an intern prepares an initial draft of a piece, but the author does have a responsibility to ensure that he or she doesn’t get lazy with respect to the final content.
maya
From the NYT:
Fixed
Valdivia
@cathyx:
agreed. But I think it says a lot about the life of the pundit class because they all know what happened but give the public a different version.
@Baud: totally on the same page as you. I think it matters that he wasn’t the one who plagiarized. But in the end he will get tagged as one.
mistermix
@brent:
mis·take
mis·took, mis·tak·en, mis·tak·ing.
noun
1.
an error in action, calculation, opinion, or judgment caused by poor reasoning, carelessness, insufficient knowledge, etc.
2.
a misunderstanding or misconception.
—–
I guess the “etc” covers intentionally doing wrong? It’s the weakest word he could have used.
Baud
@General Stuck:
It’s clear the GOP thinks the weaker half of McCain/Palin was McCain.
Anya
@General Stuck: I don’t understand why these stupid “journalists” let this guy get away with the ridiculous shit he says. Did Gregory challenge him at all?
ericblair
@Baud:
I think if the intern wrote it than the intern should get credit for it, good or bad. Otherwise it’s bullshit: said intern gets no recognition from anyone until his betters (who are taking the credit) deign to release him/her from servitude and “discover” the actual author. It’s ridiculous elitism.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
Mistermix, you know I loves ya, but you’re conflating “accident” and “mistake.” IMO, “mistake” carries a connotation of poor judgement, so it’s the right word for Zacaria to use.
Forgetting a kid at a rest stop during a family vacation is an accident; getting so angry at the kid for asking “are we there yet?” that you drive off in a fit of temper and leave him there is a mistake.
I suspect Valdivia is right about what really happened, but we’ll probably never know since everyone in the media has a vested interest in keeping the status quo going.
red dog
All these “respected” pundits are ego driven to appear on as many “shows, write books of their opinions and newspaper columns. Where do they find the time to read and/or listen to people who know what they are talking about so they can form these opinions?????
Baud
@mistermix:
Mistake
transitive verb
: to blunder in the choice of
2
a : to misunderstand the meaning or intention of : misinterpret b : to make a wrong judgment of the character or ability of
3
: to identify wrongly : confuse with another
intransitive verb
: to be wrong
MattF
An apology has three parts:
1. I did ‘X’.
2. ‘X’ was wrong.
3. I have done ‘Y’ in order to atone for doing ‘X’.
I’ll give Zakaria 1.8 out of 3.0. Better than many.
Mary
@Baud: I can’t speak for journalism, but that is pretty standard practice at law firms. An associate writes the first draft of a brief then a partner reviews and edits it before putting his or her name on it.
cmorenc
@Baud:
If an intern truly contributed to the fault here in any substantial way, any references he will receive from Zakira for further gigs won’t outwardly diss or blame the intern, but nevertheless embedded in the polite coded superficially positive language about the person will nevertheless be subtle implications that will poison the intern’s prospects for advancement in the punditocracy or think-tank world.
Valdivia
@General Stuck:
gah. Are they even trying to hide the ball anymore?
I have a question: I see a lot of commentary out there to the effect that ‘demonizing’ Ryan won’t work because he is such a ‘nice’ guy. Isn’t this the same thing they told us about Palin? How the Dems were underestimating her at our own peril, that she was a woman so treating her like a real pol and vetting her would create a backlash?
I do think it is important to have the Obama team call Ryan on his bs, but it’s more important to make sure not to take the eye off Romney. He is the TOP of the ticket. We should make the Reps own the choice they made and look ridiculous for pretending that Ryan is now the actual President-in-waiting.
cathyx
Judges have people who write opinions and do the research on their cases for them. My sister works for one in the state appellate court.
Steve
@Baud: How is the author supposed to ensure the intern hasn’t plagiarized a paragraph at some point?
Villago Delenda Est
“It was a mistake, Your Honor. I forgot armed robbery was a crime.”
General Stuck
@Anya:
Of course not. Rinse repeated the phrase “he stole it” not cut medicare, a couple of times with emphasis. Not a peep out of Gregory about those choices of terms.
kay
I was hoping it might draw more attention to the Leopore piece, which was wonderful.
It’s too long to pull bits out and do it justice, but, boy, lobbyists have done a number with us on guns. A carefully coordinated lie campaign akin to what happened with estate taxes. Remember when we found out 5 wealthy families had developed and disseminated estate tax lies? It’s that bad with gun laws. That deceptive.
It’s a depressing read. It sometimes seems as if half our public policy is based on complete bullshit cooked up by lobbyists.
Anyway, I think his punishment should be to read the article aloud, on CNN, in segments, and credit the author.
It would be a public service.
Todd
@General Stuck:
I wonder how they think they can govern if they actually manage to pull this out? I’d happily donate money to fire up the violent wing of the Weathermen in a new iteration, and would make sure that they had maps to the homes of Priebus, the Kochs, Grover Norquist, Friedman, Brooks, Parker, Nooners and the like.
Baud
@ericblair:
If the intern did the whole thing, yes. If the author is the source of the idea and thoroughly reviews and edits the piece, I don’t see an injustice.
Brachiator
@mistermix:
You should really put this into more context. Recently, there have been big scandals involving foreign heads of state having admitted this kind of thing to buff up their accomplishments. And more to the point here, big ass scandals involving an Ivy League pedigreed intern at the Wall St Journal and an up and coming ace at the New Yorker.
It’s all bad, but there is a new generation of journalist who think that plagiarism is no big thing. Maybe they have become so accustomed to cutting and pasting and sampling that the idea of original work seems old fashioned. The Columbia Journalism Review has a very good take on this. Hope the link works from my mobile device.
http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/do_cheating_journalism_student.php?page=all
The point is not whether Fareed is the worst. What he did was shitty, sloppy, and unnecessary. It inherently undermines his work and gives wingnut hacks an easy hammer to bash him with. And it is fitting right in with the larger decline in journalism in which crap work doesn’t matter as long as you get eyeballs and keep the rubes coming back for more.
Marc
“some universities will kick students out for a single instance of plagarism.”
I would love to teach at one of these universities. Are they hiring?
Amir Khalid
The byline says “Fareed Zakaria”, so Fareed Zakaria is responsible for whatever is in the piece, even if some or all of the actual reporting/writing was assigned to a junior or intern. Factual errors, plagiarized bits, all of it. If an junior/intern made the mistakes, then he/she and Zakaria are jointly and severally responsible.
But it seems from TIME’s statement that no one else was involved. So it’s all on Zakaria. I don’t buy that this incident was a mistake; I figure it was straight-up plagiarism, and Zakaria got caught this time because he did a poor job of hiding it.
It’ll be interesting to see what TIME’s review of his other work turns up. When the New Yorker review Jonah Lehrer’s other work, more recycled and lifted stuff turned up and Lehrer had to resign.
MattF
@MattF: I missed his apology to Lepore and his editors, which counts under item 3. So, more like 2.5 out of 3.0. A passing grade.
Valdivia
@General Stuck:
isn’t this line about stealing from Medicare for the ACA a Bachmann lie? I remember her saying this on a show over and over again when her star was rising.
Baud
@Steve:
That’s a good question. I don’t know. Sometimes you might be able to tell something is odd with the writing style, but I’m not sure what else you can do.
brent
@mistermix: No. If you want to use that particular definition I would say it was an error in action or judgement caused by carelessness. Of course, that is not the only definition and its usage is much wider than that but for the purposes of this discussion, it works just fine. Again, Zakaria is freely admitting that he exhibited a serious lapse in judgement. I think he communicates that pretty clearly.
But really its all a pretty trivial semantic disagreement. The question I suppose is what word do you think he should have used. How would you have phrased his apology if it were up to you?
General Stuck
@Valdivia:
It was fascinating my venture into streaming MTP this morn, for the first time in like forever, cause I wanted to hear wingers defend Ryan, and even weirder to watch Chuck Todd in the round table discussion, pretty much declaring this is the republican Waterloo, likely to give Obama a landslide election. It was interesting because I once valued Todd’s wonkery on electoral politics that he would often have a seg on C-span Washington Journal. Before he went crazy at NBC. It was the old Todd analysis, without the village CW bullshit. That Romney has lost for sure, three key swingstates of Fl, PA, and I forget the other. You could see the blood drain from the face of Rich Lowry on the panel.
General Stuck
@Valdivia:
Could be, I try not to torture myself listening to Bachmann.
WereBear
Exactly.
True thought requires research and sifting and actual cogitation. With pauses in between. Not like cranking out mini-loom potholders with elastic bands.
We have been suffering from standards erosion because our Galtian Overlords are so stupid and incompetent they want to make mediocre the new Excellent.
raven
Gold Medal hoops!
Valdivia
@Steve:
there is software out there that can do this for you. You just drop it in and it will highlight the suspect passages. A lot of Unis have it and use it and require Professors to ask students to submit their work in electronic form so the software can inspect it.
@Amir Khalid:
Time would not even have to know someone else was involved. The ghost writer won’t work for the magazine but for Zakaria himself. So their statement doesn’t necessarily reflect who wrote the piece originally. Though as you say, since he signed it, he has to take the hit. For me this is more about process, since a lot of people do this, and no one ever thinks twice when they read them in one of the big bill magazines.
Baud
@raven:
GO USA!
raven
@Valdivia: Turnitin
mistermix
@Those who don’t like my analysis of “mistake” — I hope we can at least agree that there are stronger words he could have used. “I did wrong” or some other variant that shows more intentionality is what I’m looking for in an apology.
@Marc: I’m thinking of schools with an honor code, and I’m thinking of intentional plagarism by someone who clearly knew what he was doing. But while we’re on that topic, what would happen to a professor at a school like that caught plagarizing? I’d bet it would be more than a suspension.
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud:
Perhaps he should write his own material HIMSELF?
Instead of farming it out to an intern?
After all, isn’t Zakaria the one getting paid the big bucks to WRITE for his employers?
You might use the intern to fact check (Ha! Like anyone in the MSM actually fact checks anymore…just ask Glenn Kessler!) or to do some research for you (quote boy! Get me something pithy from John Stewart Mill!) but write the copy that is going under your byline? If you have so much as a fucking atom of integrity or pride, you write it yourself. If the intern made a significant contribution with research, you give them credit for it in the piece.
This shit is not rocket science, you know.
Valdivia
@raven:
yep, this. :)
@General Stuck:
I saw it on Twitter yesterday that Todd was back to doing the actual elec votes stuff instead of the horse race idiocy. Let’s see if it lasts. I see that they are sending Ryan to the Lake States. I think they will use him like they used Palin–thinking that he can take Wisconsin, Iowa, Michigan, Minn and Ohio from Obama. I see a lot of commentary too that if he puts Wis in play that it opens up the map for Romney. Maybe that was the calculus?
beltane
I wonder who the intern who writes Tom Friedman’s columns is. Maybe it’s DougJ in disguise.
raven
@Baud: Chippie early.
kay
@General Stuck:
You know the Ryan plan includes the 400 billion in savings from NOT over-paying Medicare Advantage plans, right?
So Ryan and Romney are both taking credit for Obama saving 400 billion (over ten years, projected) AND denouncing it?
Ryan is as much a liar as Romney. He used the same lie in his last House race, but still the beltway idiots insist he’s some kind of principled truth-teller.
They’re a good match, those two. Liars in service of a Bigger Cause, and both phony and pious about it, using religion as a cover. Romney found his soul-mate, all right. Portman may have been too honest to make the cut.
Anya
@General Stuck: In this instance, Gregory is the bigger offender. He should be mercilessly ridiculed and shamed.
amk
@Valdivia: The quittah tundra twit didn’t have much of a record as half-term govnor to attack. Also. Too. Being a woman candidate made the O team tread cautiously.
Now all those bets are off. voucher ryan has enough of a congressional ‘record’ to trample him under 6-inch fuck me pumps.
Brian R.
@General Stuck:
Yeah, I thought he shat himself for a second.
I wonder if that’s why he started shouting and talking over Maddow about whether or not she agreed with Obama (and Ryan) on the Medicare cuts.
Baud
@raven:
Not unexpected. If this goes true to form, Spain will be in it until the second half.
I don’t know what it is with athletes, but they have a really blase attitude with respect to my blood pressure.
different-church-lady
“A mistake is when you walk into a open sewer and die. A terrible mistake is when I get a papercut.” — Mel Brooks
You know what the really stupid thing about this is? If he had merely cut and pasted the original passage and preceded it with “Jill Leopore had this to say in the New Yorker:” he would have been fine.
Still can’t figure out the commencement speech thing, thou. Why the hell wouldn’t two commencement speeches given by the same person share a lot of material?
Omnes Omnibus
@cathyx: A judge generally will not claim that the written opinion of the court is solely his or her work. It is not an academic or journalistic endeavor; the written opinion is supposed to be an accurate reflection of the facts and the law and then an application of the law to those facts. The judge’s signature on the opinion indicates that the judge believes that the opinion meets those standards, not that the judge authored the opinion. As an anecdotal example, during the time that I clerked, about 1/2 of the opinions for which I did the fisrt draft went through more or less as I wrote them, 1/4 ended up as a collaborative effort, and, in the final, my draft basically served as a research memo from which the judge wrote the opinion from scratch.
Bex
@Amir Khalid: I agree with your analysis. I think the tell with some of the commenters here is the statement, “I agree with most of what he says…” He’s given a pass. If he were a wingnut pundit, they’d be bashing the crap out of him, which BTW, he fully deserves.
arguingwithsignposts
WRT interns, I know at least George Fucking Will has interns (aka “research assistants”). And this intern stuff isn’t really that different from some of the stories I’ve heard about supreme court justices who have clerks write their opinions for them.
That said, anyone who “ghost writes” for someone else should get some recognition in the official record.
ETA: “A judge generally will not claim that the written opinion of the court is solely his or her work.” Omnes addresses this issue, but I do find that most of the world thinks opinions are the work of the judge, especially when it comes to supremes.
WereBear
Biden always attributed that quote in hundreds of speeches. The one time he didn’t, the Republicans pounced and made him into The Biggest Plagiarizer Evah.
Because they feared Biden. And now… the Kraken will Awaken!
Baud
@Villago Delenda Est:
I don’t know what the standards of practice are in journalism. I’ve heard that novels are often heavily revised by publishers, even though publishers aren’t treated as co-authors.
Villago Delenda Est
As for the Lepore paragraphs, what he COULD do, which people here do ALL THE TIME, is to link to Lepore’s piece or say “As Jill Lepore so thoughtfully wrote over in the New Yorker” and then, and this is the tricky part that requires actual mental effort, expand or comment on it in his own words.
This is a legitimate way to discuss ideas. There are plenty of ways to do this that I learned long ago. Now, admittedly, this was not in an Ivy League outfit, it’s in some piddling state school with a football team and a mascot who also works for Walt Disney.
Like I said. Not rocket science. Duh.
raven
@Baud: Gotta dance wit who brung ya.
El Cid
__
But, but, editorin’ is hard! I got to go to so many parties and stuff!
General Stuck
@kay:
Correct, except the amount has nearly doubled to 700 bill from the Obama heist. And a perfect descriptive shell game beyond both taking credit and denouncing it. Romney wants to restore the 400 bill, which is as you know, not related to benefits, but wingnut welfare doled out to insurance companies for ‘promoting’ or advertising the Advantage program. With Ryan in his infamous budget cutting that cash out, when the ACA is repealed. So it’s a yea/nay self contained ticket of clowns they have.
WereBear
@Brian R.: Yer gonna make me look MTP up in the Interwebs with that kind of talk…
Amir Khalid
@Valdivia:
If Zakaria submitted ghostwritten work to TIME, that is itself a firing offense, it seems to me. I was myself a journalist for some two decades, and have never heard of an arrangement where a person on staff, with the word “editor” in his title, had a personal staff of his own, to do his reporting/writing for him.
different-church-lady
@Steve:
Have a reaallllly long, serious talk with the intern about it before you let them do anything for you?
Valdivia
@amk:
ha ha ha. Love that description.
BTW, since I know you are a twitter expert. Is there someone good to follow to get a sense of the Sunday shows?
Baud
@kay:
To be fair, Ryan wouldn’t use those savings to bring health care to the uninsured, so it’s ok.
El Cid
@kay: NASA and Republican NASA plan a manned mission to Mars, with the same time frame and budget.
NASA plans to use space missions X, Y, and Z, and the following craft and preparations.
Republican NASA are mailing out vouchers so that people can collect geese which they intend to tie together when we get enough of them and then the geese will fly our team to Mars.
Both sides do it, and with the same schedule and numbers, so, it’s the same.
mamayaga
@mistermix:
If the professor were a scientist, and the U received any federal funds for research (almost all of them), then agreements that are part of federal grants require the U to investigate it as research misconduct and report to the federal Office of Research Integrity. If the prof is found guilty, the findings are published in the Federal Register, and usually there is a federal penalty (e.g., can’t receive grant funds or work on federally funded grants for 5 years). This applies to anyone found responsible for committing research misconduct, not just profs but research assistants, students, etc. In theory a finding of research misconduct should be career-ending, but in some cases the stars and rainmakers can ride it out.
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud:
Yet in a great number of works of fiction (and non-fiction, for that matter) I see acknowledgements of the efforts of editors and friends who reviewed the work before hand.
This is not difficult. This is not rocket science. This is common decency, something our elites are lacking in nearly every fucking respect.
Which is why they need tumbrel rides. They’ve earned them.
Valdivia
@Amir Khalid:
hey I agree. I am not defending him, I am just saying that I see it happen all over the place. People who have articles in 6 different magazines, everyday, they are not writing all that stuff. And I am not saying journalists do this, it’s the pundits. And Zakaria has been a commentator for a long time. I know when he was at Foreign Affairs and writing his own stuff he brought the academic sense of research with him. Now when his pieces appear in Time, CNN, and ten other publications I doubt he writes everything in every piece. he gets a draft and polishes it and sends it off.
Brachiator
Did anyone ask about Ryan’s tax returns? I wonder if this early announcement thing is not only giving Mittens a way to avoid the subject, but also a way to get Ryan to conform to the new “show nothing” standard? Has Ryan previously released his tax records?
But back to the Republican Waterloo thing. The Tea Party and their fellow travellers seem to be playing a long game to consolidate their control of the GOP. And win or lose, Ryan is a young guy who will be around for a long time, and perhaps the presumptive GOP candidate for 2016.
Also, too, I think a lot of these goofballs believe their own BS about Obama and believe that people will vote for the thin white dukes over the Kenyan usurper because everyone wants to see real Anglo Saxon Certified ™ values return to the White House, no matter how shitty actual Republican policies might be.
different-church-lady
You know what’s kinda ironic here? If you make up with a bunch of complete bullshit or outright lies, it’s fine for publication as long as it’s not copied too closely from someone elses bullshit.
But copy someone elses actual words, even if they’re true, and it’s the worst crime a “journalist” can commit. Really, it’s nearly the only thing that gets you fired.
I rest my case.
Omnes Omnibus
@arguingwithsignposts:
As a practical matter, it is my experience that, the bigger the case, the heavier the hand that the judge will wield. As a result, on the big cases, there will be nothing in the opinion that was not either written, or carefully chosen, by the jurist.
One gets a clerkship by being a good legal writer, but, especially at the federal level, one doesn’t become a judge without also being a good legal writer and one with 20-30 more years of experience than the clerk.
ETA: If a judge and his or her law clerk were to use a similar process to opinion writing in creating a law review article, the clerk should get a co-author credit or, at a minimum, an acknowledgement of the research role in a footnote.
Villago Delenda Est
@El Cid:
Those cocktail weenies at Sally’s salon aren’t going to eat themselves, you know.
different-church-lady
@cathyx: If every instance of the law needed to be original writing the law itself would hardly exist.
Villago Delenda Est
@WereBear:
THIS THIS THIS
They are lazy and got their positions because they went to the “right” school.
Our meritocracy is without merit.
Brachiator
@Amir Khalid:
Some journalists have research assistants, and at times these assistants do some of the actual writing. This is wrong, but it is compounded when there is cheating and intellectual theft. Some magazines, like some newspapers, will sometimes cite the additional contributions of others, when they know about it. But if someone like Fareed is simply assuming that his assistants will do original work, and has nothing but an honor system to depend on, he is already setting himself up for disappointment.
And of course, all this stuff is supposed to be vetted. But when you have a new breed of young journalists who see no problem with lying and cheating, even when they get caught, the entire system collapses, and no amount of editors can backstop the hackery.
Valdivia
@Brachiator:
I completely agree with this. The younger guys truly do not know or refuse to understand what the difference is between plagiarism and cutting and pasting.
Villago Delenda Est
@different-church-lady:
Yet, in that writing, there are always citations of precedent. No, it’s not original, but it’s attributed.
That’s the structure of it. It’s a massive collaborative effort that spans centuries.
As Sir Issac Newton once said (paraphrased, of course), he can see all the things he’s seeing because he’s standing on the shoulders of giants.
Look! See what I did there? It’s really not all that hard, is it Fareed?
Baud
@Valdivia:
What is the difference? If you cut and paste from someone else work, isn’t that plagiarism?
amk
@Valdivia: No one specific and everyone (almost) in my TL piss on gregory and other ss bastids.(some one has to go godwin)
Brachiator
@different-church-lady:
Copying someone else’s words and passing them off as your own is, yes, a journalistic crime.
Why is this so hard to understand?
different-church-lady
@Villago Delenda Est: Right. What I’m getting at is that law writing and journalism aren’t very good points of comparison, because law relies so much more heavily on precedent, and the exact language of that precedent.
different-church-lady
@Brachiator: It’s not hard to understand at all. I’m just wondering why it’s a worse crime than making up lies that don’t use someone elses language. Why is the former the worst crime in the book and the latter completely acceptable in modern journalism?
WaterGirl
That apology seemed genuine, but the phrasing was awkward. My best guess is that he used an intern or some other writer, and that the mistake he is apologizing for is that he used them and didn’t check for plagiarism.
That is a mistake, but it does not mean that he realized the work published under his name contained plagiarism.
arguingwithsignposts
@Brachiator:
And some have had a well-known tendency to deny such attribution to bloggers, for instance.
And copy/pasta is a sorry excuse for not citing your source. That’s what the link is for, as well as over 9000 torturous citation systems that are taught at all major universities.
amk
@different-church-lady: I am with you. There are better things to navel gaze about. The guy fucked up, paid the penalty and apologized. Nothing to see here.
JoyfulA
@Villago Delenda Est: In the academic books I copyedit, acknowledgments typically include classes and seminars that discussed parts of the book the author presented to them, colleagues by name, graduate students by name, and on and on. Even once in a while me.
Omnes Omnibus
@different-church-lady: In legal writing, you cite every case you use a precedent. If you use language from another source, you quote it and cite to it. I think Blue Book citation rules are far more stringent than APA ones.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
In all honesty, I think it’s because IOKIYAR. If a non-conservative so much as misspells their name, it’s a capital offense.
different-church-lady
@amk: Oh, there’s clearly something to see. But hell, if journalism is supposed to be about informing people, then the code of conduct needs hella more codicils than the solitary “thou shall not plagerise” commandment.
arguingwithsignposts
@different-church-lady:
Let’s not confuse actual reporting with punditing. Jayson Blair, Janet Cook and Stephen Glass, for instance, were pretty well driven out of the profession for making shit up.
Valdivia
@Baud:
sorry I meant cut and paste in your own work, as in editing, they see the internet just as an extension.
Jennifer
I understand plagiarism less than I understand just about any other transgression. Rephrasing is not that hard, and in those rare cases where someone else has already said it better than anyone else will ever be able to say it again, just insert “Bob Jones said it best in this piece in the New Yorker: “quote”.”
Voila – instant ass coverage, props to the deserving author, no potential for public embarrassment. It’s still lazy, but lazy’s not that huge of a sin as long as you’re honest and upfront about it.
different-church-lady
@arguingwithsignposts: Good point. Maybe I have my impression of things because plagiarism is an easier trespass to prove than creating composite characters or fictional personalites.
Amir Khalid
Here’s what bugs me about Zakaria calling this a “mistake”: the term conveys the sense that he made a good-faith effort to write an original piece about gun control, and then inadvertently typed in portions of someone else’s work. Like I said, I don’t buy that that’s how it happened. And even if it did happen that way, Zakaria would still be on the hook for copying.
Elizabelle
I had the most Pollyanna-ish response to Zakaria’s plagiarism, because he seems like such a good dude:
I wondered if the Lepore passage was in his research notes; got pasted into an early draft in without attribution — maybe by accident — and he edited the prose lightly in a subsequent pass.
Wondered if he’d put the essay together under immense time pressure, and was tired (which happens), and didn’t recognize another’s words as not his own.
As I say, Pollyanna.
And not a pass I would have given, say, Ann Coulter.
Amir Khalid
@WaterGirl:
Zakaria has a duty of care, to TIME and to his readers, to ensure that work under his byline, by whomever produced, is clean of errors and plagiarism.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
This plea of mistake gets a mid-range score. For a 9.8, with a difficulty factor of 3.7, is the use by Zips*:
Z: It was a mistake
(then) Mrs. Z: What, you tripped and fucked her?
*diminutive of Zipper Boy, for obvious reasons. When his then wife received a boastful call from the chippy to advise of the conquest, Mrs. Z confronted him. To which he plead mistake. True story. They’re friends now; he’s actually not a bad guy, so long as you’re not married to him, since monogamy is not part of his skill set.
Brachiator
@arguingwithsignposts:
Not saying it’s an excuse. It’s a mindset.
At a larger level, it may be part of a rejection of the idea of any kind of intellectual property by many younger people. It’s like people who post a YouTube video consisting of nothing but clips from well known movies, who get praised in hundreds of comments about how cool and “original” their work is, and reinforced by others who say that there should be no such thing as copyright.
Then again, going back to my own high school days, I knew people who had such disdain for having to do research papers, that they cribbed and stole without attribution rather shamelessly. So, while this is not a new issue, the often defiant rationalization for word theft raises it to new levels.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q): As noted above, mistake is not a poor choice; accident would be. I managed to fuck up the best part of the story above by using the wrong word:
This plea of mistake gets a mid-range score. For a 9.8, with a difficulty factor of 3.7, is the use of accident by Zips*:
Z: It was an accident.
(then) Mrs. Z: What, you tripped and fucked her?
*diminutive of Zipper Boy, for obvious reasons. When his then wife received a boastful call from the chippy to advise of the conquest, Mrs. Z confronted him. To which he plead accident. True story. They’re friends now; he’s actually not a bad guy, so long as you’re not married to him, since monogamy is not part of his skill set.
WaterGirl
@Amir Khalid: I agree. That’s why I’m speculating that the mistake he apologizes for is not plagiarism, but rather the scenario you just outlined.
Brachiator
From the Columbia Journalism review article previously cited:
Are they really not getting it? Or maybe, young journalists just aren’t buying what we’re selling.
“Are you understanding the meaning of plagiarism?” I asked one offender who’d appeared before a committee to make an appeal. It had been explained to her in writing that she plagiarized by reprinting passages verbatim, without attribution, from press releases and government publications.
Still, she hesitated.
“I mean, the word plagiarism to me is a hurtful word,” she answered finally. What she’d done hadn’t been “malicious,” she said. To her mind, there could be no wrongdoing without intent. “I guess I should have properly attributed,” she finally conceded, reluctantly, and not at all convincingly in the committee’s view. It’s unlikely that the student will be allowed to return to the university.
At Hofstra, academic dishonesty becomes even more egregious according to university policy when the student is “unwilling or unable to recognize the seriousness of the offense.”
“I apologize for … falsifying and plagiarizing my work,” another student wrote to a professor recently, blaming the transgression on “stress and a recent death in the family.” “I attempted to take the easy way out,” the student wrote. “I know that my actions are wrong and for that I am deeply sorry … I will redo the assignment in the most ethical way … [and] never again attempt to falsify my work.” The student was given a second chance, which she used to resubmit the work with the very same plagiarized passages as the original.
ETA: it ain’t just about Galtian overlords or the lofty expectations of Ivy League grads. For some, journalistic ethics are sooo old fashioned. Theft and even fabrication are cool, especially if it helps you get ahead.
And everyone has convenient excuses for accidents and mistakes when they get caught. And then they do it again, until perhaps they become a pundit, when, for many, it becomes acceptable to lie and make shit up.
pluege
this is some sort of shot across the bow of Zakaria from the plutocrats. He must have said something off-message that they didn’t like. Normally such a fault from wingnut spewers would never come to light and if it somehow did the plutocrats would have had their corporate media lackeys make it disappear.
MattF
@Brachiator: ¡Ay, caramba! The story about the plagiarist who was given a second chance is just amazing. Makes you wonder where she found that impressive apology.
JR in WV
Without reading the commentariat above, I just want to say that it is appropriate for someone apologizing to say that they made a terrible mistake. They are NOT saying it was an accident, they are acknowledging that what they did was bad, an error of judgement worth apologizing for.
People appearing before parole boards tell them about making a terrible mistake. People speaking to a judge when pleading guilty speak about their mistake. It is not a synonym for accident, at all.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator:
That’s how our Galtian overlords got to their lofty positions.
They also believe in taking the ladder up.
Heathcliff
One moderately exculpatory explanation not considered enough? This mistake may have been the errant work of one of the young “researchers” who put together many of his columns. Which is what happens when you let others do your homework.
smintheus
Zakaria’s preferred brand of mistake, supporting unnecessary wars just to “stir the pot”, has never resulted in any harm to his career. Just a lot of death and misery for others.
Anya
@Elizabelle: I was thinking (or hoping for) the same thing. He seems like a genuine person that I hope he’s not someone who purposefully cheats.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator:
Well, they’ve seen the extremes that corporations have gone to in an effort to milk every last farthing out of copyright, and they’ve decided that the entire concept is just another way for the powerful to screw over everyone else.
I mean, look at the recording industry. Remember when the CD format first came out? Much more expensive than vinyl, and the stated reasoning is “the supply is low because our manufacturing capacity is not up to speed yet.”
Wait a few years.
Vinyl is nearly extinct, and CDs are everywhere, and the price of new releases is the same (or higher) than it was before. Meanwhile, compliation disks of older material are a third the price. So getting the manufacturing capacity “up to speed” is probably not the reason for it.
It’s pure greed. Mind you, the artists aren’t getting any.
The fans don’t mind supporting the artists. They do mind paying for hookers and blow of greedy middlemen.
These guys shat the bed first. They’ve made “intellectual property” code for “rip off of consumers”.
They have no one to blame but themselves for this attitude.
JR in WV
Well, I was not authorized to edit my short piece. I attempted to say “ETA: I see that many others said much the same things about the apology.”
My echoing of others’ thoughts was purely accidental and unintentional, and if I hurt anyone by chiming in along the same thought, I’m sorry. But it might happen again if I don’t read all the comments first!
I also wonder where the second student found such a heartfelt apology without understanding what was necessary for her to take advantage of a second chance. Did she read her apology at all?
Why did she throw away such a valuable second chance? Incapable of rewriting the essay? Such a mystery!
Ben Franklin
@smintheus:
I thought of him as one of the good Muslims. I wonder if he’ll be on GPS today.
Maude
@Amir Khalid:
He stole someone’s work. He deliberately tried to pass it off as his own. That is lying.
He is sorry that he got caught.
He is paid to do a job. On other jobs, you steal, you are out the door.
This infuriates me when some pundit is too lazy to do the work and yet collects a fat paycheck.
He can not ever be trusted again.
This is the polite version.
You would never have done this and I doubt you would ever make excuses for someone who did.
He has no excuse.
Kuvasz's Wife
@Jennifer: Jennifer wrote:
The problem, Jennifer, is that avoiding plagiarism is more than just rephrasing: FZ rephrased in his piece. Plagiarism includes not only taking another’s words, but also taking another’s ideas and then not giving credit where credit is due — the words’ or ideas’ original source.
FZ did both here. He took some of Ms. Lepore’s words. Even worse, though, he took her ideas. I certainly expect a columnist’s comments to be based on original thoughts and views. And if those ideas and views coincide with another’s, then just give the other author credit!
According to Time’s spokesperson, Time expects its authors’ pieces to “‘not only be factual but original; their views must not only be their own but their words as well[.]’” http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/10/time-magazine-to-examine-plagiarism-accusation-against-zakaria/
Okay, by now I suspect that you all have figured out that I’m an academic, I teach classes in which writing is the major component, and I teach my students how to avoid plagiarism.
IMHO, the person who takes the idea without giving credit is misrepresenting his or her intellectual capacities.
Lihtox
The reason universities treat plagiarism so seriously is not just because of theft, it’s because it undermines the ability of a teacher to evaluate a student’s ability. Cheating can be very hard to catch, and so the punishment should be extreme to act as a deterrent.
Catsy
@Villago Delenda Est:
This x1000000.
The way most people under the age of 30 (and a fair number over that) regard the concept of intellectual property has completely changed in the last two decades. The law and the corporate world simply haven’t kept up.
Brachiator
@Villago Delenda Est:
Elizabelle
@Anya:
Yeah. I hope the review of previous work doesn’t find more examples.
The Columbia Journalism article was alarming.
There’s a whole moral issue to plagiarism; it surprises me anyone who graduated high school could be as clueless as some of these students profess to be.
More selfishness and ends justify the means, writ large.
Attribution is honest, ethical, gracious and generous.
Why is that getting lost in the mix?
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator:
You and I are going to have to agree to disagree on this, because I’m afraid corporations have gone out of their way over the last few decades to make the concept of “intellectual property” code for “fork over your money, suckers”.
All you have to do is look at the various legal circuses that software outfits go through to protect their “patents”.
This is rent seeking, pure and simple, and those perpetrating it need to be destroyed.
Brachiator
@Villago Delenda Est: Dammit. Could not get back into my previous comment to fix the formatting. Sorry about that.
Brachiator
@Villago Delenda Est:
The sullen mob who have the technological means to get something for nothing are as vile as any greedy corporation.
And this is not some problem of the last few decades. Shit, even Dickens may have shortened his life because he had to go on tour to make money because greedy little shits, individuals as well as businesses, particularly in America, refused to honor copyright and pay him his royalties.
And closer to home in time, I’ve always known people who stole cable, photocopied books, pirated software, videos and games, and copied music because they were thieves who knew they could get away with it. They are spiritual cousins to the corporate thieves, not a noble counter reaction.
AxelFoley
@red dog:
That’s what I’ve always wondered.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator:
Ask the artists who have to sue the corporations to get the royalties that they were contractually entitled to about about that.
Ask Kevin Costner about it.
You’re giving these shitstains a free pass.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Brachiator: As one of the people who used the BBC servers to get decent Olympics coverage, I would have been happy to pay them for the privilege if I could. I would have paid NBC for similar coverage if I could, not that I believe they’re capable of it. It’s not paying for it that I object to, but the enforced mediocrity of a protected monopoly.
I watched a little bit of NBC’s coverage, yesterday I think it was. And ended up yelling at the TV that I really wanted to see the end of the race. Yes, it was a shame that the American tripped and ended up DNF, but was it really more important to show her in tears than the rest of the race?
Brachiator
@Villago Delenda Est:
Funny, I am pretty sure you have read my past posts on this, including the one where I specifically mentioned the Costner thing.
I also noted how Universal loved James Garner and wanted to work with him in the future, and still tried to rob him of his royalties for the Rockford Files.
And in my day job, I have worked to help artists get what is due them. There ain’t no universe we live in in which I am giving anyone a free pass
And that includes the shitstain individuals who steal from artists, copy and resell their work, or who think that they have an inalienable right to “free” entertainment.
Spectre
@Valdivia:
Your post seems pretty spot on: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/fareed-zakaria-plagiarism_b_1770627.html
It’s the same thing that happened to Alan Dershowitz when he wrote “The Case for Israel”, a book apparently ghostwritten by his research assistants that ended up plagiarizing a well known fraud.
This resulted in a hilarious democracy now debate where Dershowitz gets mugged by Norman Finkelstein.
fuckwit
No, a “mistake” is when you decide to steal.
Awww, fuck it, who are we kidding….
A “mistake” is when you get caught stealing.