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| Sources accuse Zakaraia of serial plagiarism |
| 2014-09-18 |
| From The Politico This news story gives me a chance to address how I go about compiling information for an original news story. I have been writing here and at other places news for more than four years that the paid media does not, will not or cannot cover. The very issue of plagiarism came up recently in a separate forum. I rewrite everything. I don't switch a writer's words around: I take the notional concept the writer is trying to express and rewrite the facts as I understand them, not as the original author wants them to be understood. I do deal with a lot of foreign language press: two years ago Mexican press, and now Ukrainian and Russian language press. It is extremely easy to take what foreign reporters write, copy and paste and adjust the wording if the translation does not make sense, or is not in the Kings' ( or in this case, the Queen's) English. Then post it: "Hey, look what I found!"; I don't do that. As I said before, I rewrite everything. I defy anyone to take all I have written, more the a half million words since 2010, rinse it through Google Translate and show where I have even patch written the text. You can see previews of my work here by following the links. (Obvious shameless commercial plug) One other item, as an aside. During the three years I was writing about the Mexican Drug War, I attempted, repeatedly, to get Mexican politicians or even other journalists to respond to my requests for interviews, only to be denied that opportunity. Mexican politicians behave like a teenage girl goth clique. One example was during the drought in the Mexican sierras at the start of 2012. I wanted to talk to a church group in the sierras of Chihuahua state about the problems there. What I got instead was this: The Fundacion Tarahumara Jose A. Llaguno works in order to benefit the indigenous communities of the Sierra Tarahumara with education, nutrition and food assistance programs. We are currently giving interviews only to Mexican news. I replied that they are not getting much press even in Mexico, but this time I got silence. And that same applies to American politicians and military officials. If you ain't paid, or just a blogger, they don't talk. It's frustrating to be unable to act as a journalist when those people act as if I owe them something. Anyway... From TFA: For the past month, two anonymous media watchdogs have been accusing the journalist Fareed Zakaria of serial plagiarism. Across multiple reports, the authors at Our Bad Media have cited at least three dozen instances in which the CNN host and Washington Post columnist appeared to have lifted passages from various publications and websites for unattributed reuse in his books and magazine articles and on his television program. Their most recent report, focusing on 24 instances of plagiarism on his CNN show, is the most damning to date. This week, I conducted a review of the reports to determine whether the instances they cited truly qualified as plagiarism. I also asked two jourrnalism ethics experts " Robert Drechsel, the James E. Burgess chair and director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Kelly McBride, the vice president for academic programs of The Poynter Institute " to review the reports. They came to the same conclusion I did: Fareed Zakaria plagiarized. "Most of the examples provided and analyzed by the bloggers seem to fall into the realm of what is now being called 'patch writing' " using material generated by someone else, without attribution, but rewritten slightly so one cannot call it verbatim copying," Drechsel wrote in an email to POLITICO. "It falls within what I would consider plagiarism. Other examples cited by the bloggers do appear to be verbatim." "It seems obvious that Fareed was overly reliant on his source material," McBride wrote. "It's plagiarism. Low-level. But plagiarism." |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #5 Of course Joe Biden has been known to borrow a few phrases as well. Maybe it's because he is thick. Seems to be the kind of person Obama likes to have around. |
| Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 2014-09-18 15:38 |
| #4 remember that Fareed is an informal advisor to Obama. |
| Posted by: Frank G 2014-09-18 14:18 |
| #3 One of Obama's favorite writers. |
| Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 2014-09-18 14:12 |
| #2 headline changed from Souces to Sources |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2014-09-18 12:24 |
| #1 It would be 'low level' plagiarism if he simply used someone else's words while talking live about something. We all get our information from somebody else; very few people are actual eyewitnesses to the events people talk about. When you publish, in writing, somebody exact words and phrases, without even mentioning that it comes from 'whoever', it isn't low-level; It's outright theft. I predict nothing will come of this; he's a darling of the leftist media, and 'whoever' is simply guilty of stealing Zakaria's ideas before he had them. |
| Posted by: ed in texas 2014-09-18 07:26 |