Dowd issues a weaselly apology for plagiarizing Josh Marshall

[cali]

Maureen Dowd in Hot Water, Admits Wrongdoing, 'NYT' Will Correct

By Greg Mitchell

Published: May 17, 2009 7:55 PM ET

NEW YORK It was a wild Sunday for New York Times columnist. It opened with her latest column in the newspaper, which closed by declaring that she had once opposed a wide-ranging probe of the uses of torture, and who authorized and knew about it, during the Bush administration but now favored it. This brought some praise liberal news sites and bloggers often critical of Dowd.

But by mid-afternoon she was on the hot seat for using a paragraph almost word-for-word from one of the most prominent liberal bloggers, Jost Marshall of Talking Points Memo, without attribution. Charges of "plagiarism" ensued.

By early evening, Dowd had admitted wrongdoing, in an email to Huffington Post, and said she wanted to apologize to Marshall. She also said that the Times would issue a correction tomorrow -- and the copy was changed in her column to attribute the line of thought to Marshall.

She seemed to be suggesting, however, that she had merely heard the line of argument from a friend, who did not attribute it to Marshall. This wouldn't explain, however, why the rather lengthy sentence, a full paragraph, matched Marshall's writing virtually word for word.

Dowd's note to Huffington Post reads:

"josh is right. I didn't read his blog last week, and didn't have any idea he had made that point until you informed me just now.

"i was talking to a friend of mine Friday about what I was writing who suggested I make this point, expressing it in a cogent -- and I assumed spontaneous -- way and I wanted to weave the idea into my column.


<snip>
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003973894

[autorank]

1. k*r Why not attribute it to Marshall

That's part of the fun of writing in the age of the information superhighway. There's so much
out there, grabbing pieces of what others are saying as a part of one's writing is a sign of
serious research. Of course, there are ideas that form and become common in just days and hours,
so the idea isn't the thing. The actual wording of an idea is, however, critical and should
be acknowledged.

Now I'll go look at the evidence;)

That was easy.

From the link above:

Marshall's original paragraph reads:

"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 werechanged to 'the bush crowd' looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq."

The only words changed from Marshall paragraph: "we were" to "the Bush crowd was."

So golly gee. I'm sorry but this is a very specific quotation that was only slightly modified,
which implies intentionality on Dowd's part.

These words could have been inserted just as easily, "As Josh Marshall said, 'More and more ..."

What a shame.

Hope there's some logical explanation but it doesn't look like it right now.

[johnfunk]

2. Weasel woman, weasel words, fire her!

'Nuff said.

[Mass]

3. NYTimes has "corrected it", but the excuse is really weak.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/opinion/17dowd.html?_r=1

Josh has the full story here

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/thejoshuablog/2009/05/ny-times-maureen-dowd-plagiari.php?ref=fpd

It cannot lower my opinion of MoDo (it is already at its lowest), but it will remind us that her standard are low.

[Wetzelbill]

4. I could see her coming close to that

while just writing the short paragraph on her own on that particular line of thought, especially with a limitation on words. But still, it is waaay too close and doubtful that she would get that close without a little fishiness going on. Could be she quickly read it at one point and when she sat down practically regurgitated it.

[islandmkl]

5. in other words:

"I NEVER thought MY readers read HIM."

[Enrique]

6. her explanation is impossible

no way that could have happened without cut and paste technology.

[NowHearThis]

I'd prescribe Dr. Goodbody's Brain Reboot for Ms. Dowd

nt

[Muttocracy]

7. Fascinating - from the woman who made it her mission to take down Biden in 1988... nt

[jillan]

20. Yep - she was the one that first put it in print that Biden plagiarized.

Instant karma's gonna get you....better respect your brother, everyone you meet.....


You deserve it Maureen...you helped get daddy Bush elected.

[Jennicut]

31. What goes around comes around. She is so mean spirited to so many Dems.

I do not get why anyone still likes her.

[PatSeg]

32. It only took twenty years,

but justice prevails. What goes around, comes around.

[lapfog_1]

8. Two thoughts...

1. If she "inadvertently" lifted the paragraph because a friend read it verbatim over the phone to her and Maureen thought it was the original thoughts of her friend...

Why didn't she attribute the friend?

Something like "I was talking to a friend and they made the following point..."


2. Why didn't someone, probably Maureen herself, take the time to "google check" the articles she writes (or an editor).

As a matter of course, if I was a writer, I would have a piece of software that takes every sentence from my article and "google it" to find matches, just so I would not be accused of plagiarism. It's an easy piece of software to write, surely someone at the Times (or other newspapers) has already thought to write such a thing (hell, it's so trivial it could probably be done in 50 or lines of perl or other scripting language).

[JI7]

9. can you imagine what she would write about someone else who did this

and used the excuse she gave.

[BlooInBloo]

11. And I love how newspaper people keep whining about how much we NEED them.

:rofl:

[Jackpine Radical]

15. ...probably about the same things she said about Joe Biden

in 1988 when she pretty much knocked him out of the Presidential race with her plagiarism stories?

[BlooInBloo]

10. Some of the tweet-conversation amongst the bloggers is funny...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5673688#5673925

[omega minimo]

12. mebbe she channeled it

[stevedeshazer]

13. That explanation is quite weak.

Apparently, Josh Marshall is even more widely read than previously believed.

[DemReadingDU]

14. and both names are in the news

discussing the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.
__________________


Plagiarism? maybe. But it's also getting more people to hear that Bush illegally went to war in Iraq by torturing people.

[gratuitous]

16. Those darned bloggers and their time-travel machines!

It was Dowd's thought originally! Josh Marshall just swiped it, went back in time, and posted it as his own. In keeping with the level of discourse currently going on right now anent Nancy Pelosi and the Bush administration's torturing of prisoners, let's see Mr. Marshall prove he didn't plagiarize DoDo MoDo by traveling back in time.

Arrest my case!

[FourScore]

17. Kids get thrown out of college for plagerism.

sometimes just weeks before graduation.

That was the problem when Doris Kearns Goodwin (who I like very much, BTW) was found to have plagerized a few years ago. She also gave an apology and a weak explanation (sloppy notes). The problem was, however,that she also sat on the Harvard review board whenever students were accused of plagerism. When they came in with the sloppy notes excuse, the board would still kick them out of school. Students were pretty outraged about it.

Plagerism is serious.

I will say that I really don't like Maureen Dowd very much. Other than the piece she did in Latin a few years ago, I find her work boring and over-rated. She writes more empty columns than any other reporter I know of. Why she works in such a prestigious job has always been a mystery to me.

[malletgirl02]

21. You are right

It is not just students, plagerizing also has ended careers as well.

[MannyGoldstein]

18. Doesn't Make Sense That She'd Do This Purposefully

She's not a dummy - it's obvious that it would get caught in a millisecond, as it was. She has no prior history of plagiarism that I know of.

[Occam Bandage]

26. Plagiarism never makes sense. The risk/benefit ratio always sucks.

People do it anyway, because laziness often outweighs rationality.

[Buzz Clik]

19. An idiot and a plagiarist? Knock me over with a feather.

[MADem]

22. Look, look...it's "MODO" jumping a shark!!!

About time.

So, it's not OK to steal from Marshall, but it is OK to steal from a friend? Why didn't she credit the "friend" for the line of thought? Tsk, tsk.

[struggle4progress]

23. "I just cut-n-paste lines from emails until I have a column!"

[snot]

24. yecch.

[Occam Bandage]

25. Karma's a bitch. nt

[bridgit]

27. She should maybe wag her jaw a little less and do the homework maybe?

[ruggerson]

28. Who?

n/t

[Forkboy]

29. She's so nasty she makes me look like Up With People.

So I find this turn of events pretty funny.

[BR_Parkway]

30. Interesting that M$M publically says bloggers are inferior - then uses

their work without attribution.

[eleny]

33. .