Letters to the Editor
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One in National Review, too?
There appears to be at least one example of his plagiarism in the conservative magazine National Review. If true his actions cannot simply be dismissed as a college prank/mistake.
http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2006/3/23/181857/404/136#c136
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Plagiarism is what happens when boring people are desperate not to be
If you're that desperate to look good in print, do this little thing called brainstorming, note-taking, and obsessive self-editing after the fact. Get a Synonym Finder and search for the perfect word to represent your idea. Read good writers and jot down some of the words and expressions they use that you would like to adopt as your own. Learn about the subject you're writing on. If you're a movie reviewer evaluating a Scorsese film, go rent some of his previous films. If the film is about ambulance drivers, also rent some other movies about ambulance drivers. Compare and contrast. Chew up and spit out as many ideas as you can and then go back and clear away the ones that aren't very interesting or original. See what's left. THIS IS CALLED WRITING. If you can't do it then find another job. Leave the plagiarism and dishonesty to self-promoting cretins like Elizabeth Wurtzel and Stephen Glass.
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Not just the teen movie reviewer
Yes, it's apparently more than his college writing and, despite what RedState is claiming, more than movie reviews. Joe, please do another update of this after the storm settles a bit. i'd like to hear your further analysis of this scandal. The RedStaters are acting as though plagiarism is no big deal. As journalists know, it's just about the biggest.
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The Last Straw
As a DC resident, I have now officially changed my home page from the Post to the Examiner.
Not as flashy, perhaps, but at least it has some journalistic integrity.
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Geez!
I don't care if it was just college writing or movie reviews or whatever. Look at it! This is extensive stealing of other people's words. The guy has NO credibility as a writer. Way to go, WaPo.
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Another Example
There's another example of Ben's plagiarism -- this time, a music review by James Hunter that he stole from Rolling Stone:
http://blogs.mediavillage.com/zigzagger/archives/2006/03/washington_post.html
Thought I'd add it in the interest of keeping a full tally...
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More plagiarism from Ben
this time, he steals from the Washington Post while writing for the New York Press.
http://yourlogohere.blogspot.com/2006/03/im-not-journalist.html
So he plagiarized while at the Flat Hat, NRO, at the New York Press. This would suggest a pattern of behavior, no? Maybe Jim Brady's smug response in an article by Howard Kurtz to the criticism of Domenech will be rewarded with some more of Ben's plagiarism.
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Ouch
Seriously. Ouch. Did he think he wouldn't be caught when thrust into the mainstream media? Wow. Ever heard of Google?
Happy ride meathead.
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Domenech blames his editor
According to Howard "Weathervane" Kurtz in today's Post ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/23/AR2006032301991.html ), "Domenech said he needed to research the examples [of plagiarism] but that he never used material without attribution and had complained about a college editor improperly adding language to some of his articles." See? It's never a rightwinger's fault, it's always what somebody else did to him.
I'm not buying that excuse, and I hope nobody else does.
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Hmmm...
This kid is a bum, but...
...do MSM writers never "borrowing" from bloggers?
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A Republican who steals anything that isn't nailed down.
What a shock.
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Maybe he thought he was too smart to get caught
Unfortunately, I've had lots of experience with students plagiarizing, and a lot of the time, they are genuinely surprised when they get caught. They honestly believe that they are outsmarting their teacher/reader, and that we're too dumb to figure it out.
Others simply don't see plagiarism as a problem, and can't understand why people get so worked up about it. To them, it's just no big deal.
One student told me that I shouldn't be upset with him for having plagiarized 98% of his paper from the internet, because it was his girlfriend who wrote the paper for him. Like that made it all better.
At any rate, plariarism is a serious problem on many college campuses, and Domenech's transgressions come as no surprise to me. He would probably echo my former student who once said, "You people think too much about too much stupid shit."
Integrity just doesn't matter to some people. What surprises me is that the Post didn't bother to vet this guy more carefully.
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Who cares about the Washington Post?
I trust the Washington Post as a source of the truth as much as I trust the New York Times, or even Salon.com for that matter. In order for this story to have impact, you would have to ignore the white elephant in the room. The Washington Post, the New York Times etc...are nothing more than corporate owned shills for anti-democratic governments and the status quo of supporting the haves over the have-nots. Stop throwing so much respect their way. The mention of ethics and journalism in the same sentence should be avoided.
Another issue of note is the tendency to swarm like a pack of wolves on those who choose to speak in public. This over scrutiny will eventually limit the number of voices to:
Those who do active service in the military - preferably combat experience.(We all know now you can not have an opinion on war if you haven't served.)
Those who never run afoul of the law.
Those who never make mistakes in college.
Those who never cheat on their taxes.
Those who never cheat on a spouse, lie, plagiarize, gamble, overuse prescription drugs, and the other myriad of human frailties that all of us at one time in our lives are guilty of. What is the point of making a large issue of minor plagiarisms, when larger lies, with detrimental results to our democracy, exist unchallenged?
In another, yet truer paradigm, we would report on the miracle of good reporting, or the accidental truths that sometimes get published "major" newspapers. Loose some of this journalism school respect for the tired old monopolies of human thought. Try to remember that these bastions of truth were all started by publishing magnates whose most obvious goal was to do a land grab for power via control over the public's opinion.
I have a new idea. The concept of plagiarism as an ethical breech is a self imposed restraint on true free speech. Words, ideas, concepts, sentences, paragraphs, even out right lies should not be patentable, copyrightable, creditable or in any way not in the public domain. They should be for use as anyone sees fit without requirement to credit. I say let free speech run its true course. Anyone can say anything at any time without ethical, moral, or criminal/civil law constraints. Then real people can stand up and be heard and real statements of original thought might be proclaimed.