Plagiarism in Vermont Congressional campaign causes stir
from the Vermont Guardian:
The chain of events began this past weekend when a Community College of Vermont professor, Julie Waters of Westminster, intrigued by something she read on a popular blog — Green Mountain Daily — decided to see if the statements of Republican Martha Rainville were her own, or were plagiarized from other politicians.
What Waters found and then posted on her own blog Sunday — Reason and Brimstone — unleashed a firestorm in the Vermont blogosphere October 2. By the day’s end, a top Rainville campaign aide — Chris Stewart — was fired and Rainville’s campaign website was disabled while staffers combed the site to determine how many passages were potentially plagiarized.
Of some interest, the Vermont Republican was plagiarizing material from Democrats:
In one instance, she found that Rainville cited as her own words a statement on U.S. energy policy that appears to have originated from Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY.
Waters also found a Rainville statement on the need for transparency in federal budgeting that she believes originated with Rep. Jim Cooper, D-TN, and was copied from a transcript of the public television program NOW, which aired on Aug. 25. The Rainville statement appeared on her campaign website Sept. 8.
The text concerning Hillary Clinton is discussed on reasonandbrimstone:
From Martha Rainville's web site, there is the following statement on energy:
"Briefly, I strongly believe that our present system of energy is weakening our national security, hurting our pocketbooks and threatening our children's future."
source: http://www.martharainville.com/issues/issuesTxt.htm
In May, Hillary Clinton delivered the a speech which includes the following comment:
"Our present system of energy is weakening our national security, hurting our pocketbooks, violating our common values and threatening our children's future. "
Source: http://clinton.senate.gov/news/statements/details.cfm?id=255982
IPBiz query: If politician A says x, and politician B says "I believe x", has politician B plagiarized politician A?
Also, from the NRDC:
Safe, Strong and Secure: Reducing America's Oil Dependence
America's rising consumption of oil threatens the economy and national security.
America spends more than $200,000 per minute on foreign oil -- $13 million per hour. More than $25 billion a year goes for Persian Gulf imports alone. This NRDC analysis considers oil demand and supply projections and how our current policy of oil dependence effects our economy and security.
Also, from Jimmy Carter's 1980 state of the union address:
The crises in Iran and Afghanistan have dramatized a very important lesson: Our excessive dependence on foreign oil is a clear and present danger to our Nation's security. The need has never been more urgent. At long last, we must have a clear, comprehensive energy policy for the United States.
While IPBiz tends to believe that Rainville's website took some words from Senator Clinton without attribution, Rainville's website did not claim to originate the idea, which in any event is hardly novel. If Rainville's website had said "I strongly believe that all men are created equal," is it plagiarism?
The Vermont Guardian also stated:
“Here's the best part about this: notice the grammatical error in Cooper's original comment: "There should be no secrets unless it involves certain parts of national security." (the noun is singular but the verb is plural),” writes Waters on her blog. “Rainville's statement makes that exact same grammatical error — it's not just a rendering of the same idea. It's cut and pasted from the statement (sic) by Cooper.”
[IPBiz: huh?]
The names Joe Biden, Tony Blair, or Laurence Tribe did not appear in the Vermont Guardian article.
***
The reasonandbrimstone website has some relevant comments about the relationship of blogs to this story:
Much of the focus on the whole Rainville story has become more about me and how I uncovered it, and so much of it has been about the power of blogs to influence the mainstream media.
I don't think it should be about any of those things. Here's why:
(...)
This isn't about the blogosphere rising up to get the mainstream media to focus on something. I found this information on Sunday night. I posted it on the blog because it was easiest (and because there's a comments field, in case anyone wanted to respond), but I could just as easily have placed it on any one of my websites. If I'd done this, would anyone be framing it in terms of blogs or the blogosphere?
This wasn't picked up by mainstream media because I posted it on my blog. This was picked up by mainstream media because I sent an e-mail out to everyone I could think of who worked for a paper with which I was familiar, and used the blog as an information archive. Mainstream media was all over the story more quickly than most bloggers, and the one blogger who was on it quickly (Peter Freyne) got the story because he was affiliated with Seven Days, one of the newspapers to which I sent the original story.
**
Of the highlighted text --This wasn't picked up by mainstream media because I posted it on my blog. This was picked up by mainstream media because I sent an e-mail out to everyone I could think of who worked for a paper with which I was familiar, and used the blog as an information archive-- IPBiz notes that comments on Kintisch's "news of the week" article in Science on continuations which were posted on IPBiz attracted no attention. Further, emails to Kintisch and a phone conversation with Kintisch produced only a --Science stands by its story-- response. At this point, please note the article "On the proposal to restrict continuing applications" which appears in JPTOS, pp. 743-746 (Sept. 2006) and thoroughly shows Science and Kintisch were incorrect in what was published in Science.
**
IPBiz tends to agree with Waters that blogs, per se, are not cutting edge newscreators. Blogs are generally ignored. HOWEVER, there was Rather-gate. And, now, in the Foley matter, one blog is claiming a news flash through an inadvertent disclosure by ABC news:
I will be working on the story today and will present my findings tomorrow. I will put out a press release later today outlining what I will reveal on Wednesday October 4th at 4pm Central Time. I have contacted several bloggers to check my finding and verify that they are indeed accurate. I have also sent emails to major media and two United States Representatives. This will be a major news story and there is the possibility that this story will not be well received by the major news media. More updates throughout the day. Stay tuned to Passionate America for this breaking story [by Wild Bill]
Drudge said: A posting on ABCNEWS.COM of an unredacted instant message sessions between Rep. Mark Foley and a former congressional page has exposed the identity of the now 21 year-old accuser.
The website PASSIONATE AMERICA detailed the startling exposure late Wednesday.
ABCNEWS said in a statement: "We go to great lengths to prevent the names of alleged sex crime victims from being revealed. On Friday there was a very brief technical glitch on our site which was overridden immediately. It is possible that during that very brief interval a screen name could have been captured. Reviews of the site since then show no unredacted screen names."
A similar inadvertent disclosure created collateral damage in the San Filippo / Rutgers affair.
**
EditorAndPublisher notes:
And the blogs that pick apart every article that the [Washington]Post produces are a good thing, said Len Downie, because they "keep the paper honest" and, even if their commentary isn't positive, bring people to the site.
"Blogs are not competitors and not problems," he said. "Instead we have a very interesting symbiotic relationship. Our largest driver of traffic is Matt Drudge."
IPBiz: ?
**
As one further note, IPBiz observes that just because you have placed something on a blog (or elsewhere on the net) does NOT mean that a Google search will find it.
The chain of events began this past weekend when a Community College of Vermont professor, Julie Waters of Westminster, intrigued by something she read on a popular blog — Green Mountain Daily — decided to see if the statements of Republican Martha Rainville were her own, or were plagiarized from other politicians.
What Waters found and then posted on her own blog Sunday — Reason and Brimstone — unleashed a firestorm in the Vermont blogosphere October 2. By the day’s end, a top Rainville campaign aide — Chris Stewart — was fired and Rainville’s campaign website was disabled while staffers combed the site to determine how many passages were potentially plagiarized.
Of some interest, the Vermont Republican was plagiarizing material from Democrats:
In one instance, she found that Rainville cited as her own words a statement on U.S. energy policy that appears to have originated from Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY.
Waters also found a Rainville statement on the need for transparency in federal budgeting that she believes originated with Rep. Jim Cooper, D-TN, and was copied from a transcript of the public television program NOW, which aired on Aug. 25. The Rainville statement appeared on her campaign website Sept. 8.
The text concerning Hillary Clinton is discussed on reasonandbrimstone:
From Martha Rainville's web site, there is the following statement on energy:
"Briefly, I strongly believe that our present system of energy is weakening our national security, hurting our pocketbooks and threatening our children's future."
source: http://www.martharainville.com/issues/issuesTxt.htm
In May, Hillary Clinton delivered the a speech which includes the following comment:
"Our present system of energy is weakening our national security, hurting our pocketbooks, violating our common values and threatening our children's future. "
Source: http://clinton.senate.gov/news/statements/details.cfm?id=255982
IPBiz query: If politician A says x, and politician B says "I believe x", has politician B plagiarized politician A?
Also, from the NRDC:
Safe, Strong and Secure: Reducing America's Oil Dependence
America's rising consumption of oil threatens the economy and national security.
America spends more than $200,000 per minute on foreign oil -- $13 million per hour. More than $25 billion a year goes for Persian Gulf imports alone. This NRDC analysis considers oil demand and supply projections and how our current policy of oil dependence effects our economy and security.
Also, from Jimmy Carter's 1980 state of the union address:
The crises in Iran and Afghanistan have dramatized a very important lesson: Our excessive dependence on foreign oil is a clear and present danger to our Nation's security. The need has never been more urgent. At long last, we must have a clear, comprehensive energy policy for the United States.
While IPBiz tends to believe that Rainville's website took some words from Senator Clinton without attribution, Rainville's website did not claim to originate the idea, which in any event is hardly novel. If Rainville's website had said "I strongly believe that all men are created equal," is it plagiarism?
The Vermont Guardian also stated:
“Here's the best part about this: notice the grammatical error in Cooper's original comment: "There should be no secrets unless it involves certain parts of national security." (the noun is singular but the verb is plural),” writes Waters on her blog. “Rainville's statement makes that exact same grammatical error — it's not just a rendering of the same idea. It's cut and pasted from the statement (sic) by Cooper.”
[IPBiz: huh?]
The names Joe Biden, Tony Blair, or Laurence Tribe did not appear in the Vermont Guardian article.
***
The reasonandbrimstone website has some relevant comments about the relationship of blogs to this story:
Much of the focus on the whole Rainville story has become more about me and how I uncovered it, and so much of it has been about the power of blogs to influence the mainstream media.
I don't think it should be about any of those things. Here's why:
(...)
This isn't about the blogosphere rising up to get the mainstream media to focus on something. I found this information on Sunday night. I posted it on the blog because it was easiest (and because there's a comments field, in case anyone wanted to respond), but I could just as easily have placed it on any one of my websites. If I'd done this, would anyone be framing it in terms of blogs or the blogosphere?
This wasn't picked up by mainstream media because I posted it on my blog. This was picked up by mainstream media because I sent an e-mail out to everyone I could think of who worked for a paper with which I was familiar, and used the blog as an information archive. Mainstream media was all over the story more quickly than most bloggers, and the one blogger who was on it quickly (Peter Freyne) got the story because he was affiliated with Seven Days, one of the newspapers to which I sent the original story.
**
Of the highlighted text --This wasn't picked up by mainstream media because I posted it on my blog. This was picked up by mainstream media because I sent an e-mail out to everyone I could think of who worked for a paper with which I was familiar, and used the blog as an information archive-- IPBiz notes that comments on Kintisch's "news of the week" article in Science on continuations which were posted on IPBiz attracted no attention. Further, emails to Kintisch and a phone conversation with Kintisch produced only a --Science stands by its story-- response. At this point, please note the article "On the proposal to restrict continuing applications" which appears in JPTOS, pp. 743-746 (Sept. 2006) and thoroughly shows Science and Kintisch were incorrect in what was published in Science.
**
IPBiz tends to agree with Waters that blogs, per se, are not cutting edge newscreators. Blogs are generally ignored. HOWEVER, there was Rather-gate. And, now, in the Foley matter, one blog is claiming a news flash through an inadvertent disclosure by ABC news:
I will be working on the story today and will present my findings tomorrow. I will put out a press release later today outlining what I will reveal on Wednesday October 4th at 4pm Central Time. I have contacted several bloggers to check my finding and verify that they are indeed accurate. I have also sent emails to major media and two United States Representatives. This will be a major news story and there is the possibility that this story will not be well received by the major news media. More updates throughout the day. Stay tuned to Passionate America for this breaking story [by Wild Bill]
Drudge said: A posting on ABCNEWS.COM of an unredacted instant message sessions between Rep. Mark Foley and a former congressional page has exposed the identity of the now 21 year-old accuser.
The website PASSIONATE AMERICA detailed the startling exposure late Wednesday.
ABCNEWS said in a statement: "We go to great lengths to prevent the names of alleged sex crime victims from being revealed. On Friday there was a very brief technical glitch on our site which was overridden immediately. It is possible that during that very brief interval a screen name could have been captured. Reviews of the site since then show no unredacted screen names."
A similar inadvertent disclosure created collateral damage in the San Filippo / Rutgers affair.
**
EditorAndPublisher notes:
And the blogs that pick apart every article that the [Washington]Post produces are a good thing, said Len Downie, because they "keep the paper honest" and, even if their commentary isn't positive, bring people to the site.
"Blogs are not competitors and not problems," he said. "Instead we have a very interesting symbiotic relationship. Our largest driver of traffic is Matt Drudge."
IPBiz: ?
**
As one further note, IPBiz observes that just because you have placed something on a blog (or elsewhere on the net) does NOT mean that a Google search will find it.
posted by Lawrence B. Ebert at 5:53 AM
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