NYT's Dowd Admits Plagiarizing Blog

(AP)  New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has admitted to using a paragraph virtually word-for-word from a prominent liberal blogger without attribution.

Dowd acknowledged the error in an e-mail to the Huffington Post on Sunday, the Web site reported. The Times corrected her column online to give proper credit for the material to Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall.

The newspaper is expected to issue a formal correction Monday. A request for comment made by The Associated Press was not immediately returned by the Times late Sunday.

The error appeared in Dowd's Sunday column, in which she criticized the Bush administration's use of interrogation methods in the run-up to the Iraq war.

In the original column, Dowd wrote: "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."

Marshall last week wrote virtually the same sentence. But where Dowd's column used the phrase "the Bush crowd was," Marshall used "we were."

Dowd, who won a Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1990, told the Huffington Post that the mistake was unintentional. She claims she never read Marshall's post last week and had heard the line from a friend who did not mention reading it in Marshall's blog.

In the updated version on the Times' site, Dowd's column had this note: "An earlier version of this column failed to attribute a paragraph about the timeline for prisoner abuse to Josh Marshall's blog at Talking Points Memo."

[globalcoolin]

Without trashing Bush it becomes almost impossible to sell Obama in a convincing way. We are supposed to pardon the theft becuase it is a really REALLY good (bad!) pice of agitation propaganda stolen, then used for A Good Cause.
Journalism of the left is about mantra, copy cat, regurgitation, repetition....
The pool is so tiny and shallow lefties are going to be bumping into each other constantly.

[caligula1--2008]

< "brianbwb-2009 - what distinguishes a neo-capitalist from a straight forward capitalist?" Posted by jimmyc1955

The straight capitalist is only concerned with financial advocacy, while the neo seeks also to insert twisted social issues, which it wishes to impose upon others.>

So in your view is a wood pulp company who wants to open public land for controlled harvest a normal capitalist or a neo-capitalist bent on harming the "green" movement? The outcome is, afterall, the same, regardless of intention. Yet he HAS to have a label, no?

Most corporate efforts in the area of social advocacy can be traced, at one point or another, to corporate matters even if they are just related to public relations. Sometimes you have an activist entrepreneur/CEO that uses his own money for purely philanthropic reasons, but those are the exception not the rule, particularly with publicly traded companies.

The wood pulp and federal agencies don't want hemp legalized for all sorts of reasons, and none of them have anything in particular to do with the dangers of Marijuana, so what do you call a government that maintains the facade of the war on drugs for social reasons when in fact they're acting on the behalf of corporate and other interests. Neo-Democracy? By STRICT definition this level of entanglement is fascism, less the element of an ongoing regime, unless you can consider our "two party and no one else" system to be a single regime.

[alanrobisch]

It was plagiarism plain and simple and is often the basis for a person to be fired. I am sure she will not be though it would do my soul good. She is the most snobbish arrogant writer I have ever seen

[puzzler125]

With the vast amount of information we take in daily from newspapers, magazines, television, film, and of course the internet, it would hard to be original 100% of the time. The best course of action is to admit a mistake and give credit to an original source as soon as a mistake is realized.

[brianbwb-2009]

"... So again I am puzzled. Are you a laissez-faire capitalist or a democratic socialist? Which model do you prefer? ..." Posted by jimmyc1955

The problem with Americans is that these are the only two choices that they understand. they cannot conceive of a mix of the two poles, in which there is a floor, below which no one should be allowed to fall, but no ceiling as to how high you are clever enough to rise.

There are several examples of the success of this approach, visit Singapore, for example, and you will see a well ordered, tidy (so tidy in fact that it could use some character, but that is a very minor issue) society, where very rich people live along side a relatively stable middle class, and the non rich classes are at least not homeless vagrants discarded by their society, left to fend for their own.

[brianbwb-2009]

"brianbwb-2009 - what distinguishes a neo-capitalist from a straight forward capitalist?" Posted by jimmyc1955

The straight capitalist is only concerned with financial advocacy, while the neo seeks also to insert twisted social issues, which it wishes to impose upon others.

"I assume your not a marxist - or you wouldn't run your own company to be profitable you would run it to ensure the rewards are shared fairly with all - even those who have done little to nothing." Posted by jimmyc1955

I profit share, and there is no one in my company that does little to nothing, each of my employees' roles is vital, if one fails, we all fail. I place no subjective valuation on the contributions of my employees, no one is worth more than the others. I myself frequently get less than my people, and they see it, this is why they are loyal to me, and attempts by so-called rivals to buy them off have been to date unsuccessful.

Call it marxism if you will, it works for me and my company we have done alright, as evidenced by the fact that we have entered the EU market successfully, and are preparing to go into the US market.

Investors? We don' got no investors. we don't need no steenkin' investors.

[jimmyc1955]

brianbwb-2009 - I need to be useful today. I have enjoyed the discussion, though I will remain puzzled by your posiiton.

But it is clear in my mind that Maureen Dowd plagerised those words - and that for every other writer found guilty of that by the NYT (an by Dowd herself who justifibly accused Joe Biden of the exact same crime) a punishment of loosing their job was exacted upon them. It remains to be seen if Ms. Dowd is above the ethics of journalism - which is what I suspect will happen. A few days dust up - actually less since no news media is choosing to run this story - and everything back to normal.

[brianbwb-2009]

brianbwb-2009 - What your arguing is that intellectual property is only of value if the person can defend it and profit from it before others do the same. I think that is usually refered to as anarchy..." Posted by jimmyc1955

Nope, it is called capitalism, it is what it has become, ever since any competing ideas have been so demonized that mere mention of them causes fits of apoplexy among the neos.

You might remember your US history lesson, land claims by those who "settled" the west were only valid for those who could defend them.

As for genetic research, genes are a fundamental building block of living beings, and as such shouldn't be "owned" by anyone, and if that discourages investment, ok by me, we've survived for ages before the concept was dreamed up. Even now the situation is starting to appear that you may have, in the future, to copyright your own genes, before someone else does it, then "owns" your family lineage.

Think that far fetched? Ask the farmers whose corn crops were wind-pollinated by Monsanto's GM corn, who were then sued by Monsanto for copyright violation, they lost enough money to tell you that it is not.

[jimmyc1955]

brianbwb-2009 - what distinguishes a neo-capitalist from a straight forward capitalist?

I assume your not a marxist - or you wouldn't run your own company to be profitable you would run it to ensure the rewards are shared fairly with all - even those who have done little to nothing.

[jimmyc1955]

brianbwb-2009-This point of computers is not one of denial but time.

Yes - those who could afford computers in the early days got one - those who couldn't didn't. Over time that product when from exclusive to commodity and is available in any corner of the world. The only difference is time. You seem to be saying that protection of IP is infinite - but you know it's not. In most countries it's seven years or less.

And the Asian market, one you seem to feel to be the "reality" of markets is far more basic capitalistic than any wester european or US market which are regulated.

So again I am puzzled. Are you a laissez-faire capitalist or a democratic socialist? Which model do you prefer? I