{"id":17043,"date":"2012-09-23T10:21:24","date_gmt":"2012-09-23T15:21:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=17043"},"modified":"2012-09-24T16:42:20","modified_gmt":"2012-09-24T21:42:20","slug":"plagiarism-in-the-globe-and-mail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/09\/23\/plagiarism-in-the-globe-and-mail\/","title":{"rendered":"Plagiarism in the Globe and Mail<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Writing at Maclean’s<\/em>, Colby Cosh<\/a> outlines the case against Globe and Mail<\/em> columnist Margaret Wente and the Globe<\/em>‘s public editor Sylvia Stead:<\/p>\n

Journalistic plagiarism is ordinarily regarded as what a lawyer would call a strict-liability offence. It may not be deserving of a career death penalty in any particular case, but the evidence of plagiarism usually suffices to establish the crime. Stead\u2019s procedure as a public editor appears to involve looking into the soul of the accused and searching therein for gremlins. Does she, one wonders, believe in the objective existence of plagiarism at all? Again, she does not use the term, and she will not believe that Wente had heard even a rumour, even a whisper, of Gardner\u2019s prior work for the Citizen<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Well, it is not likely there will ever be a case in which Stead is presented with close-up video footage of Wente using her mouse to highlight someone else\u2019s words and pressing Control-C and Control-V. That is why the strict-liability standard is usual. If Stead will not apply it \u2014 if she is willing to accept any denial from a fellow Globe<\/em> lifer, however preposterous \u2014 then how can she ever, as an impartial judge of journalism ethics, deliver a conviction? Can it be that the whole point is to have the appearance of accountability without the actual possibility of it?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Update, 24 September<\/b>: Chris Selley<\/a> in the National Post<\/em>:<\/p>\n

I think I\u2019ve narrowed down my top two discreditable aspects, though: One, Stead\u2019s reference to the fact that Wente \u201cwrites three times a week,\u201d which could only pertain to a defence of overwork; and two, this astonishing sentence: \u201cThere appears to be some truth to the concerns but not on every count.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the thing. I have some experience cornering plagiarists, and these are two of their standard defences: \u201cMost of the allegations aren\u2019t that bad,\u201d which of course says nothing about the worst of them; and \u201cI\u2019m so<\/em> busy,\u201d which isn\u2019t a defence at all but rather an appeal for clemency. And yet here is Sylvia Stead, Public Editor of The Globe and Mail<\/em>, effectively raising these arguments on Wente\u2019s behalf<\/em>. This isn\u2019t public editing; it\u2019s public relations, and inept public relations at that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Writing at Maclean’s, Colby Cosh outlines the case against Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente and the Globe‘s public editor Sylvia Stead: Journalistic plagiarism is ordinarily regarded as what a lawyer would call a strict-liability offence. It may not be deserving of a career death penalty in any particular case, but the evidence of plagiarism […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,28],"tags":[271,213,134],"class_list":["post-17043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-media","tag-ethics","tag-newspapers","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4qT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17043"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17045,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17043\/revisions\/17045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}