A Free From Editors reader forwarded the following comment offline to my e-mail. This must have come up while I was blissfully traveling through Kentucky a week or so ago. I've left the names in the story because I know who sent me the item and I did visit the comment thread (first link). Without seeing the first column I'm at the mercy of those who say it was a direct lift.
If it was a direct lift, and implied it was the writer's own work, that would be a serious journalistic offense. Anytime you use someone's work you should identify it as theirs, not yours.
I am familiar with other issues where journalism ethics were compromised and dealt with quietly at the Journal, even when it many of us believed the honest thing to do would have been to at least alert our readers that, say, a quote or source had been made up. In at least two cases the Journal has fired, or allowed people to quietly resign, over those issues.
Anyway, here's the comment as I received it. I'm not publishing the person's name, but they if they want to claim it (as I said I know who it is) they can publish a comment claiming it.
"Jim;
Did you see this letter in the Journal on Thursday?
http://www.mlive.com/opinion/flint/index.ssf/2009/04/john_tomlinsons_machiavelli_cl.html#3375422
A letter writer had accused columnist John Tomlinson of plagiarism and sloppy research.
Specifically, Tomlinson was accused of lifting the opening paragraph of a column written in "American Thinker" by Lloyd Brown for his own April 5 column. I figured the Journal wouldn't print such a letter if it's claims were unfounded, so I called John Foren to check.
He said he saw the letter and approved it. He also said that he spoke with Mr. Tomlinson about "what the paper expected of him", but wouldn't go so far as to agree with the letter writer's accusation of plagiarism.The column in question has been removed from MLive, but the "American Thinker" article is still available (http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/is_obama_a_prince_among_men.html)
and it looks a lot like what I remember reading in Tomlinson's article.It looks like plagairism to me, but as of this morning, Tomlinson is still writing for the Journal, and no mention of the controversy has been mentioned by him, by John Foren, or anybody else at the paper, in spite of repeated requests by posters at MLive for a clarification or explanation.What do you think?"
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13 comments:
Plagiarism is spelled incorrectly multiple times in this blog.
Fixed, I only found the one instance (in the headline) but it is one of those words I always had trouble spelling. Limousine is the other. I always tried to get away with "limo."
I'll go back and see where I misspelled it before.
But thanks for calling it to my attention.
Why does anyone read John Tomlinson's drivel anyway? And, what imbecile decided that Tomlinson's views needed to be read by FJ readers? His column is a complete and utter waste of time, not to mention ink and newsprint.
Let's not get distracted. There should be room in any newspaper for many voices.
I didn't post this to object to Tomlinson's column. People can choose to read or not read. Diverse voices are needed.
But not if they are borrowing thoughts and ideas from others without attribution.
A newspaper would be pretty boring if it only writers from one perspective.
IT IS PRETTY BORING, THATS ONE REASON I QUIT.
GET RID OF THE SOFT STUFF AND DO MORE LOCAL AND RUN AT LEAST 6 DAYS AND I'LL RETURN AS A FAITHFUL READER....
I am the one who sent the e-mail to you, and I'm probably the one who misspelled plagiarism which bugged "anonymous" so.
Like I had mentioned before, this column was taken off of the website, but I found a copy of John Tomlinson's April 5th column deep in our recycling bin. It begins with:
" 'When seeking office, the aspirant must pretend to be what he is not. After seizing power, he should impose his agenda quickly and ruthlessly, before his subjects realize what he is doing and have time to react'
Sound familiar? It's Machiavelli's 'The Prince,' a famous 16th-century treatise on amorally seizing and cunningly exercising power."The first paragraph is the exact same quote from "The Prince" used by Lloyd Brown in the original piece. Both followed the quote with the words "Sound familiar". It is only then that Mr. Tomlinson begins to use his own words, but the second paragraph closely echoes the second paragraph of the Brown piece, which says:
"Sound familiar? It might, but this approach was designed 500 years before the Barack Obama campaign in 2008."Whether or not quoting from the same piece of literature to make the same point, and following it with the same two word retort and conclusion constitutes plagiarism is probably one I'm not qualified to answer, but it sure looks like plagiarism to me.
I also agree with the other conclusions of the letter writer that the rest of Tomlinson's doesn't explain his conclusions, and is poorly researched.
I wish I could blame the spelling error on you, but the error was all mine. You had it right.
Thanks for your comment.
Uhg...I signed using my blogger profile name, which means I didn't sign at all. I am Kevin McKague.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that I find it interesting that this particular column is the only one of John Tomlinson's columns not still posted by the Journal on Mlive.
All others can be found here: http://www.mlive.com/opinion/flint/index.ssf/john_tomlinson/The removal of this particular column sure looks like an admission of guilt to me.
Just a quick note for everyone. Feel free to contact me offline (as Kevin did) at my e-mail address below.
If you don't give me specific permission to use your name, I won't.
As in Kevin's case, I will give you the chance to claim your work as your own, if you desire.
Wasn't Tomlinson the "reader representative" fo a while? It's kind of screwy, the Journal wanted SOME right of center presence in locally generated opinion columns, so the last editor hired a "hypno-therapist" to write the usually disjointed columns. It's a very very odd thing.
On the other hand, Heller has had to apologize several times for making things up, and borrows jokes ala Mike Barnacle on a weekly basis, and reasoning-- what reasoning?
I can see why the Flint Journal wouldn't have an issue with one of its "columnists" stealing someone else's work. After all, Booth has just spent the last couple of weeks informing employees how much it'll be stealing from their paychecks.
I could've sworn that a few years ago when Mitch Albom (another waste of ink and paper, IMHO) was found writing about players being at a game that they weren't at, the Freep did research and revealed on a few occasions Albom had lifted stuff form other people. But yet he continues working there.
I worked at one newspaper, was let go and a week or so later an article I'd written and gotten photos of was run under someone else's byline. I called the publisher and he said it was an "honest" mistake.
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