UPDATED: Can Maureen Dowd produce her friend's email?
May 24, 2009 8:20 am ET by Eric Boehlert
It took nearly an entire week, but we now have a clear answer to the question of where NYT columnist Dowd picked up the paragraph from her column that was essentially verbatim to a paragraph printed at Talking Points Memo.
At first, via email correspondences with the press, Dowd suggested she spoke to a friend and that from that conversation she lifted her friend's comments. But the idea that Dowd would copy what her friend said and that would be word-for-word match of what appeared on TPM simply was not believable.
Then Dowd seemed to indicate that perhaps the friend had emailed the passage without telling the columnist that it came from TPM.
Now, thanks to the work of Times public editor Clark Hoyt, we discover that passage in question did in fact come in the form of an email that Dowd received from a friend and then simply cut and pasted it into her column without attribution. Will Times readers be surprised that that's how its supposedly prestigious columnists craft their columns? I would certainly think so.
But more importantly, I think, is whether the Times will ask Dowd to produce the email that the friend sent her. That's the only way to confirm her account and make sure that Dowd didn't simply plagiarize TPM. The media's Village is quite content that Dowd did nothing wrong. That it was just one innocent mistake. To date, the Times editors agree and are giving Dowd a complete pass.
But if the Times were serious about its opinion standards and was serious about getting to the bottom of the humiliating mishap, they would demand to see the email and also talk with Dowd's mysterious friend.
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Dowd is a plagiarist-- and the fact that she plagiarizes from friends or friendly sources makes no difference. It's NOT HER MATERIAL, and that's the point. She's known for her wit-- celebrated for it, in fact-- and it now raises serious questions how much she gets from other people.
What other ghostwriting does she benefit from? Do NYT editors help her with her stuff, and is that why they protect her so much? Is she more of an editor than a writer?
It makes all the difference in the world.
You want to attack her for collaborating with a colleague? Go for it. But don't falsely equate it with plagiarism. It's not.
That's acceptable? It's clearly not. What else does she copy-- what else isn't her own? That's the point here. She plagiarizes others and doesn't give them credit.
Does she hire gag writers, too? Don't count that out.
I'm really amazed at the sleazy ethics I see displayed here.
First of all there is no such thing as "mainstream media" there is only "corporate media". 97% of all media in this country is owned and operated by five(5) corporations. All these corporations care about is that we are good consumers to whatever they are serving up today.
Ms. Dowd will probably get a pass simply because (and this is solely my opinion) after her numerous years as a columnist this is the first time something like this has happened. I believe that in order to get a great deal of whatever lost credibility back she should show the email or present the "mysterious" friend to set the matter straight.
It's the explanation I gave in the very first posting Media Matters made on this topic via Jamison Foser.
The issue that Boehlert and Foser wants to raise in a dishonest way is that Dowd said she had a conversation with a friend, implying that a conversation can't happen via email or IM. It can.
Maureen Dowd apologized to the original source of the material. How is apologizing because your friend didn't cite her source a "humiliating mishap", Mr Boehlert? Her friend suggested that she frame the debate in a certain way, but didn't tell her that she, the friend, had stolen that framing from Josh Marshall at TPM. How is that humiliating for Dowd?
Oh, and it's NOT plagiarism to copy the non-published words of your friends who suggest you use their words to describe a point in a column one is writing. Plagiarism is using the words without authorization, and Dowd thought they were her friend's words and her friend gave her permission. Now, it turns out that they weren't her friend's words, but Dowd didn't know that! She took the words with what she thought was the 'owner's consent'. There's a huge difference between intentionally taking someone's work without their consent (plagiarism) and having someone offer you a sentence or thought and suggesting that you use their phraseology in a column you're writing. One is plagiarism, and the other is the generosity of a friend. I know, in this case, the purported generous friend didn't have the right to offer that phraseology as her own, but Dowd didn't know that.
I am not supporting Maureen Dowd in any way. I am attacking MMfA's 'attack the messenger' attitude here. Any fair view of what happened here makes it clear that the info her friend passed on was not in a verbal conversation, but a written one, captured from a friend, and not from the original copyrighted source.
If you want to attack her for the fact that she either needed help or accepted help from a friend to express this fairly simple thought about the questionable timelime of torture and how it relates to the Bush Administration trying to link Al Qaeda terrorists to Iraq, be my guest.
The Editorial Page Editor for the NYT says "Journalists often use feeds from other staff journalists, free-lancers, stringers, a whole range of people. And from friends."
In the two paragraphs preceding the comment lifted from TPM, Dowd credits two other people for their statements! It's not like she's another troll who posts others' published material and passes it off as her own. Once she was informed that she had inadvertently stolen someone else's work, she apologized and had her column corrected.
Oh, and Eric - do we know that they have not seen the email/IM already? Nope, we don't. Another specious charge. You're better than this, Media Matters, Eric and Jamison.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/opinion/17dowd.html?_r=2
http://mediamatters.org/blog/200905190005
http://mediamatters.org/blog/200905170020
I generally think we're too quick to pull the trigger with charges of plagiarism. I haven't said anything about this because I really didn't think I had anything to add. Whatever the mechanics of how it happened, I never thought it was intentional. Dowd and the Times quickly corrected it, which I appreciated. And for me, that's pretty much the end of it.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/05/very_briefly_on_dowd.php
So he says in his mind it's not plagiarism since there was no intent to plagiarize his published work, and says that the apology and correction are enough for him.
Students forget to cite sources all the time- and confuse their opinions with the opinions of those being cited, generally through laziness during the research phase or "honest" mistakes. It doesn't make it any less Plagiarism, however.
Dowd didn't forget to cite a source. She has no obligation to cite her friend in a column. In a paper for school, rules are different, and I don't understand how you don't know that. When you get an idea informally from a friend or a colleague, you don't have to cite them when you are writing a column.
For you to suggest that the intent of an innocent party (Dowd) has no relevance is ridiculous. Intent matters in almost all things. If someone receives stolen property, but has no reason to know or believe it's stolen property, they are not charged with receiving stolen property. They lose the property they have, but they are not guilty of a crime. Dowd changed the column to reflect that it was Josh Marshall's stolen property.
Like he said, people are too quick to charge others with plagiarism.
She copied someone's else's words verbatim ! This is acceptable?
Who's the writer here? Dowd-- or someone else? This is just like the Doris Kearns Goodwin incident-- where people gave her a pass because they said she was "just" copying her T.A.'s notes-- who copied from another book!
Intent has nothing to do with plagiarism, either. Nor does blaming third parties. And plagiarism doesn't have to be word for word, either. Just ideas alone need to be attributed.
This is not a minor incident-- it calls into question this renowned "wordsmith's" entire body of work. Where does she get her material? Is it always hers?
This is not the same as writing an academic work, or as a student doing something for a grade. That you and jamele aren't willing to acknowledge that is your problem, not mine.
And yes, if she had no idea that she was taking Josh Marshall's words, it's not plagiarism of his work. It's not plagiarism of her friend, as that is acceptable to collaborate with another person to create a column like this. Intent does matter. She thought she was collaborating with a friend. She had no intention of stealing without attribution, and she had no way of knowing that she was stealing without attribution. Sometimes students or other authors read something, don't remember that they've read it, and then submit it as their own. That's plagiarism, even if there was no intent, but Dowd never read this material, so it's not the same. She used the words of her friend, and in doing that, there was no plagiarism.
Ideas from collaborative colleagues or friends do not have to be attributed. That's the whole point. Sorry you've missed that. Intent does matter.
"She had no way of knowing that she was stealing without attribution." So she WAS stealing without attribution, and we are back to INTENT? Well, that's a start, anyway- at least you are admitting that Dowd stole- let's see, stealing of intellectual property without attribution....what's that called again?
You simply refuse to acknowledge the definition of plagiarism. Your motives for defending Dowd are a bit mysterious, but please, stop the mental gymnastics. Plagiarism is plagiarism, no matter how hard you try to twist it into something else.
You really need to stop digging that hole. Dowd didn't say "this is my friend's opinion." She didn't bring up the story about her friend until she got caught. I don't know if she INTENDED to commit plagiarism or not, but that's NOT THE POINT.
Please, Luvluv, stop pretending you can just make up new definitions for words as you go along. (Oh, and no- there are NO different rules for school papers and for columns. I'm surprised that YOU don't know that, Miss Condescension.)
And it's sad that you claim to be a teacher yet you don't understand that it does make a difference if in a collaborative effort, a friend offered a phrase and she didn't say that it was the friend's words.
Why don't YOU just admit that you don't know what you are talking about? The New York Times head guy said that your interpretation of this was wrong.
Dowd didn't HAVE to say that it was her friend's opinion. It was a collaborative effort.
Just to remind you, this is what the NYT chief said. Through a spokeswoman, the Editorial Page Editor said "Journalists often use feeds from other staff journalists, free-lancers, stringers, a whole range of people. And from friends."
And even the NY Times public editor, who takes Dowd to task for using another source, states that she didn't plagiarize when she did that. And I said that if you want to criticize her for taking from another person, and not being solely responsible for her column, go for it, but that's a separate issue! She didn't plagiarize. It's pretty darn simple, and you calling it plagiarism doesn't make it so.
Judges publish opinions that are written by their clerks all the time without ever citing those clerks, becuase it is a collaborative effort. The clerks do the bidding of the judge, the judge makes the ruling, and then the clerks do the legwork to fill in the empty spaces. So, if there's no difference between an academic work and a judge's written decision (you said that there's not different standards for different things), how come we don't constantly accuse judges of plagiarism? It's because there ARE different standards for different things, and collaborative work is one of those things where it is permissible to do exactly what she did.
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/05/18/new-york-times-defends-maureen-dowd-on-plagiarism-charge/
Politics Daily contributor Tommy Christopher says
"Dowd admitted her mistake, her explanation makes sense if it was in an email, and she corrected it. The passage in question is unremarkable, the kind of thing I would credit if it were a published work, but which would be awkward to credit otherwise. Like, "I was talking to a friend of mine named Stacey who told me that the timeline..."
She had the intent of taking her "friend's" words without citing her friend. That's plagiarism. You lost with debate. Deal with it. You look really stupid at this point.
You REALLY need to look up the definition of plagiarism.
It doesn't matter who she copies from-- she got CAUGHT! It wasn't HER material-- and is this a common practice for her? Does she hire joke writers, too?
I love this tolerance-- if she'd been a student, she'd get an 'F', and no one would defend her by saying, "well, she got it from a friend..."
Writing a school paper is different than writing a newspaper column.
Try this kind of "collaboration" on a term paper and then get caught. Watch what happens.
Sorry professor-- my friend wrote this-- I didn't know she copied it from the Internet.
Completely unethical.
Actually, NO! She plagiarized, by definition. Please attempt to deal with facts and reality. You are clearly not living with either on this topic.
So People are coming to Dowd's defense -- oh, she's offered a reasonable explanation. What the big deal?
Here's what I want to know -- was Joe Biden's "reasonable explanation" accepted after Maureen Dowd did John Sasso's hatchet work for him in 1988?
Another defense of Dowd is that "after numerous years as a columnist this is the first time something like this has happened.."
I'm reasonably sure that it's not. You can bet all her previous columns are being run through plagiarism-searching software and Nexis searches to identify past incidents. And if they exist, they'll be found.
In this instance, Dowd wrote in her e-mail explanation that she'd "been talking with" a friend who gave her the idea. Amazingly, this friend said it word for word from the TPM column, and then Dowd wrote it down word for word. When that explanation didn't fly, she said her friend hadn't spoken to her, he'd e-mailed her. So, in this version, her friend copied and pasted, and then Dowd copied and pasted, and neither attributed. Fine. Then produce the e-mail and prove you're not an intentional plagiarist and a liar.
This is really unbelieveable-- this defense of Dowd-- and it's only because people AGREE with her here.
Simply put, Dowd doesn't write her own column--they are not always her own words. Is this acceptable to people?
But most here are Obama fans, and so they dismissed her sexist attacks on Hillary. I also voted for Obama, but I don't take enjoy sexist attacks regardless of who they are aimed at.
Dowd is a borderline personality who has much less talent than she is generally given credit for.
And now we come to find out that, much like the junior high school Heather she comes across as, there are other Heathers with whom she is passing notes to get her material.
But what's most important is that in this case we have very simple way of resolving these questions. As Eric Boehlert suggests, the Times should look at the concrete evidence: the email message. If they do not, then the logical conclusion would be that the email doesn't exist and that the Times is complicit in covering for Dowd's plagiarism.
Anyway, I'm glad that if she did plagiarize she stole from Josh Marshall. Usually, big media types plagiarize from RNC press releases. At least she wrote was good, just not original.
My god, the woman copied him and he sits there and acts like it's acceptable-- it's goes to the very heart of her credibility!