by Deb Cupples | A blogger pointed out that Maureen Dowd's Sunday New York Times column included a paragraph that was nearly identical to one that TPM blogger Josh Marshall had published on Thursday.
Ms. Dowd denied having read Mr. Marshall's piece and told Huffington Post:
"But, clearly, my friend must have read josh marshall without mentioning that to me.
we're fixing it on the web, to give josh credit, and will include a note, as well as a formal correction tomorrow."
Perhaps Ms. Dowd had not knowingly taken Mr. Marshall's words, but she knew that she had taken her friend's words -- without crediting her friend.
How hard is it to properly give credit (or to avoid taking undeserved credit) for someone's else words? It would have taken about 33 key strokes to write the following:
As a friend recently said," ."
(I counted the quotation marks and the capitalized letter A as each requiring 2 keystrokes because of shift-key usage)
Is the famous and formidable Ms. Dowd so lacking in fresh ideas that she has to lift phrases from friends or bloggers?
I've pasted the two amazingly similar paragraphs after the jump so that you can compare them.
A blogger from thejoshuablog.com made the comparison in a post at TPM as follows (see how easy it is to give credit to another person?):
Josh Marshall's Paragraph (May 14, 2009):
"More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.
Maureen Dowd's Paragraph (May 17, 2009)
"More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq."
I suppose it's possible that Ms. Dowd's friend had memorized the whole 43-word paragraph and rattled off those words -- in the exact order in which Mr. Marshall had originally arranged them.
Alternatively, it's possible that the friend read to Ms. Dowd (on the phone) all 43 of Mr. Marshall's words -- in the exact order in which Mr. Marshall had originally arranged them -- and used pauses and inflection to make it sound as though the particular word-arrangement had been spontaneously generated by that friend.
Possible, yes -- but how likely does it seem?
Glenn Greenwald commented:
"[I]t is also very common -- as the Dowd/Marshall episode illustrates -- for traditional media outlets and establishment journalists to use and even copy content produced online and then present it as their own, typically without credit. Many, many reporters, television news producers and the like read online political commentary and blogs and routinely take things they find there.
"Typically, the uncredited use of online commentary doesn't rise to the level of blatant copying -- plagiarism -- that Maureen Dowd engaged in. It's often not even an ethical breach at all. Instead, traditional media outlets simply take stories, ideas and research they find online and pass it off as their own. In other words -- to use their phraseology -- they act parasitically on blogs by taking content and exploiting it for their benefit."
Memeorandum has commentary.
Other Buck Naked Politics Posts:
* Wall Street Journal Ensures Ad Revenues by Defending "The Rich"
* Congressman Grayson Asks if Anyone Knows Where the Money Went?
* Pelosi's Embarrassing Attempts to Extricate Herself from Controversy
* 43 Kids Stun-Gunned While Visiting Florida Prisons
* Geithner & the Medicare Crisis: Two Possible Soultions
* Smoke & Mirrors: Health Industry Offers to "Stem" Price Increases?
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