Posted on 03/24/2006 10:47:49 AM PST by RWR8189
In the past 24 hours, we learned of allegations that Ben Domenech plagiarized material that appeared under his byline in various publications prior to washingtonpost.com contracting with him to write a blog that launched Tuesday.
An investigation into these allegations was ongoing, and in the interim, Domenech has resigned, effective immediately.
When we hired Domenech, we were not aware of any allegations that he had plagiarized any of his past writings. In any cases where allegations such as these are made, we will continue to investigate those charges thoroughly in order to maintain our journalistic integrity.
Plagiarism is perhaps the most serious offense that a writer can commit or be accused of. Washingtonpost.com will do everything in its power to verify that its news and opinion content is sourced completely and accurately at all times.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.washingtonpost.com ...
Yes... anyone who is caught plagarising should be fired.
Isn't that right Senator Biden?
Golly, I don't know about that. Two words: Walter Duranty.
Perhaps I'm confused, but how is it "plagiarism" if you recycle your own stuff?
Most serious? How about putting Judith Miller and Armstrong Williams as worse.
Good. Now how many others at the Post will have the same amount of class and do the same. As well as the NY Slimes.
I think they mean "if any of his past writings were plagiarized".
I'll bet you can count them on the fingers of one foot.
It's not even in the top three.
1. Undermining national security.
2. Causing disrespect in our country and around the world for America, American leaders and military.
3. Continually publishing biased news articles and mindless editorials to try to shift public opinion to the Left, rather than trying to report the truth.
The Washington Post should fire itself.
It should be noted that, so far as I can tell, NOBODY has actually accused Ben of plagerizing THEIR work.
All the charges are based on finding copied work that does not contain attribution.
But there is no way to tell if Ben had permission to use the works without attribution. Until a writer comes forward and actually says that something Ben wrote was taken from him without permission, he has not committed plagerism, he's merely copied stuff without letting us know he copied it.
BTW, we just had an argument in a local blog. The owner of the blog kicked out all his other contributers. In doing so, the software supposedly required that he either delete every threat written by the contributers who were deleted, or to put his name as the "contributer", which is what he did.
But, all the other contributers eventually said they were OK with it.
So while the blogger has his name on stuff he didn't write, he isn't plagerizing or stealing, because he has permission.
Now, those other contributers went off and formed their own blog, and copied over the threads they were most proud of, under their own names.
If in 5 years any of these people come under fire by the left, these old posts will be dug up and the leftists will claim that someone is plagerizing because they are identical articles under different names on different blogs.
And if the other of the pair no longer keeps track of stuff, there may be no way of proving the charges false.
So, while I don't mind Ben resigning (I thought that the whole idea of a conservative blog attached to the post was stupid, Ben could already be read over at red state), I withhold judgement on him until someone makes a specific charge of plagerism of their own work.
I find Michelle Malkin is too quick to rush to judgment in her field, as if she is the arbiter of right and wrong just because she does blogging.
The leftists have no clue to the fact that they've just shot themselves in the foot!
Salon.com has, giving examples here of their pieces which he ripped off. Gotta say, I hoped the kid would have better criteria. I mean, plagiarizing Salon.com? He's poisoning the well!
I read somewhere that Dana Milbank recommended this guy. Do you guys think it was a set-up? There is no shortage of experienced, qualified conservative writers -- why hire an ethically challenged kid instead, unless you are trying to make him look bad? They should be ashamed, and we should be suspicious.
If they decide to no longer have a "conservative" blog, then it would seem they set him up.
If you read the article on Salon that you referenced, it doesn't include any mention of the authors who wrote the copied items.
Salon itself may not have given him permission to copy the stuff, but maybe those authors did. I can't know if he got permission or not, and any of those authors could come forward and say they didn't give him permission.
But why would Salon run an article mentioning passages from two of their writers, and NOT include a statement that their writers did NOT give him permission? Wouldn't they have contacted those authors to ask if he had permission?
So it seems strange that Salon would write this article and NOT include anything from the actual authors complaining about the copying . I believe they are all still alive.
Good point, I forgot that most of Salon's writers are probably freelancers, so we have no way of knowing.
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