Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Those are the words at the bottom of the Associated Press's April 8 article on the awarding of the Medal of Honor to Michael A. Monsoor.
The full text of the article, along with the text of the Herald-Whig's April 10 editorial on Monsoor's award ceremony, may be seen here:
http://quincypundit.blogspot.com/2008/04/
about-that-editorial-plagiarism-take.html
The Quincy Pundit spotted this rather obvious cut-and-paste job on the day the editorial appeared. I was not aware of it until this morning, when I read a question in the comment section of my previous post.
This appears to me to be a clear and very unfortunate case of plagiarism. Now.....a complicating factor:
We all know, or at least should know, that the Whig does not write all its editorials. Like most small- to medium-sized newspapers, it subscribes to an editorial service that sends it prepackaged editorial matter on national and international topics. Sometimes those materials get localized, more often they don't. So it is possible that nobody at the Whig did the actual plagiarizing.
But somebody somewhere sure did.
Nowhere in the editorial is the AP mentioned. No quotation marks are placed around the verbatim material. Jennifer Loven, the writer of the original article, is given no credit for her words.
If you did this in your high school English class, your paper would be given a "zero" and you would be sent to the principal's office.
If the lifting of the AP text was done in-house, the H-W should acknowledge its error and explain to its readers how it happened. If it was done elsewhere, the H-W should explain the sources of its editorials to its readers to correct any false impression that all the material on the Viewpoint page is locally originated. In either case, an apology is in order.
The full text of the article, along with the text of the Herald-Whig's April 10 editorial on Monsoor's award ceremony, may be seen here:
http://quincypundit.blogspot.com/2008/04/
about-that-editorial-plagiarism-take.html
The Quincy Pundit spotted this rather obvious cut-and-paste job on the day the editorial appeared. I was not aware of it until this morning, when I read a question in the comment section of my previous post.
This appears to me to be a clear and very unfortunate case of plagiarism. Now.....a complicating factor:
We all know, or at least should know, that the Whig does not write all its editorials. Like most small- to medium-sized newspapers, it subscribes to an editorial service that sends it prepackaged editorial matter on national and international topics. Sometimes those materials get localized, more often they don't. So it is possible that nobody at the Whig did the actual plagiarizing.
But somebody somewhere sure did.
Nowhere in the editorial is the AP mentioned. No quotation marks are placed around the verbatim material. Jennifer Loven, the writer of the original article, is given no credit for her words.
If you did this in your high school English class, your paper would be given a "zero" and you would be sent to the principal's office.
If the lifting of the AP text was done in-house, the H-W should acknowledge its error and explain to its readers how it happened. If it was done elsewhere, the H-W should explain the sources of its editorials to its readers to correct any false impression that all the material on the Viewpoint page is locally originated. In either case, an apology is in order.
posted by Allthenewsthatfits at 9:29 AM
11 Comments:
When it says "Our Opinion" at the top of the editorial, it should be their opinion and their words and if its not it should be clearly stated otherwise.
My main point of being pissed off is this story covered a Medal of Honor winner .
Not sure what the basis for your claim that everyone should know the Whig doesn't write their own editorials is. Do they print somewhere in their paper? Do you get a flier when you subscribe saying this is so?
I agree. I think 98 percent of the public is under the impression that either the publisher, the editor or an editorial page editor writes all of the Herald-Whig editorials.
I think that same percentage will feel duped when they learn otherwise.
I think 98 percent of the public should understand that they haven't seen (and probably never will) the QHW's contract with AP.
Wouldn't surprise me in the least to learn that its has permissions for various uses of AP copy.
That copyright notice, BTW applies to you and me making use of the info, not to contracted affiliates (depending on what specials are in their contract).
I note that WGEM, KHQA, and other news outlets use AP stuff all the time and don't "credit" particular reporters.
Nature of the journalism biz. You don't have to like it, but that's how it is.
And yes, I agree that purely from a "do right" standpoint they oughta give the original writers a nod of some sort to acknowledge their source.
Running an AP story in a newscast and stealing whole paragraphs to put in an editorial that someone had partially written under the heading "Our opinion" are two entirely different things.
3:40
"And yes, I agree that purely from a "do right" standpoint they oughta give the original writers a nod of some sort to acknowledge their source."
When you don't acknowledge the source and you cut-and-paste whole paragraphs, it's called plagiarism.
We see lots of stories the reporters write that have the tag "The Associated Press contributed information to this story".
In some of those cases, a reporter will write a couple of original lines and fill the middle with verbatim AP wire. Not exactly in the spirit of the rules and the practice would flunk you out of a real J-School but, hey, we know there are deadlines to hit.
We also see AP bylines on many other stories in the paper.
This editorial had neither.
"Our opinion" was "Somebody else's opinion".
Look ,
It dealt with the Medal of Honor !
That is the heart of the matter and what really pisses people off !
They didn't even run the story on the Medal of Honor winner.
Probably too busy looking for anti-Bush cartoons.
The Harold Rag sucks.
Who gives a crap whether the story is about the Medal of Honor or not? That's not the point here. If the story was about a deer taking a crap in the woods, would Tookie not care? It would be OK in that circumstance but not because it's about the Medal of Honor?
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