Posted on 01/08/2017 2:53:03 PM PST by Kaslin
Monica Crowley was recently tapped as Donald Trump’s selection to be the Senior Director of Strategic Communications on the National Security Council. Unfortunately for her, former Buzzfeed researcher (now with CNN) Andrew Kaczynski has been digging into her 2012 best seller, What The (Bleep) Just Happened and has turned up multiple instances of obvious plagiarism. Crowley is a long time Fox News host and conservative columnist, so she was no neophyte when it comes to the rules of the road for journalists and authors. Trump is calling this essentially a political hit job, but it’s definitely a problem. (CNN)
Conservative author and television personality Monica Crowley, whom Donald Trump has tapped for a top national security communications role, plagiarized large sections of her 2012 book, a CNN KFile review has found.
The review of Crowley’s June 2012 book, “What The (Bleep) Just Happened,” found upwards of 50 examples of plagiarism from numerous sources, including the copying with minor changes of news articles, other columnists, think tanks, and Wikipedia. The New York Times bestseller, published by the HarperCollins imprint Broadside Books, contains no notes or bibliography.
Crowley did not return a request for comment. Multiple requests for comment by phone and email over the past two days to HarperCollins went unreturned.
Crowley, a syndicated radio host, columnist, and, until recently, a Fox News contributor, will serve as Trump’s senior director of strategic communications for the National Security Council.
So is it a “politically motivated attack” as the Trump transition team is saying? Well… this didn’t come out of the Democrats’ oppo files. Kaczynski made his bones in the political news world by specializing in digging through the archives of political figures and dredging up their past to hold in contrast against what they say in the present. Now he’s apparently turning those talents to the field of uncovering plagiarism.
One might argue that the position Crowley is heading toward isn’t really an editorial or publishing job, so what’s the big deal, right? Perhaps those of us who cover these stories are a bit more sensitive than the citizenry at large, but man… it is a big deal. Anyone who writes for a living knows that plagiarizing the work of others is pretty much held on the same level as a war crime. For writers, it’s just about the worst thing you can do. Steven Taylor at Outside the Beltway explains why Crowley, given her background, should have known better.
The link contains the evidence, which is thorough and damning. It is also of a type quite familiar to me after years of teaching and dealing with this kind of thing: the change of a word here and there by the author, as if that is enough to make the words and thoughts original. Really, to me, it is just evidence of knowing theft: the attempt to subtly doctor paragraphs in the hopes that there will be enough change for others not to notice or to create some kind of plausible deniability.
She has a Ph.D. in International Relations from Columbia and she has been a published columnist for decades. She knows exactly what she is doing.
That’s all true. But we also have to ask ourselves if this High Crime among writers is, or even should be enough to sink Crowley for this new job. She’s not going to be an author or editor at the National Security Council. Being willing to commit plagiarism speaks to one’s character to be sure, but it doesn’t always sink people, even in journalism and cable news. Mike Barnicle’s employers at the Boston Globe once demanded his resignation over multiple plagiarism charges and he’d previously been accused of the crime by folks including Mike Royko. Still, you’ll find him on Morning Joe almost every day being introduced as “legendary” by the crew, so people have risen up to new careers after such charges in the past.
At the end of the day, however, the rest of the world doesn’t treat plagiarism as the same sort of High Crime that we do. And it probably won’t sink Crowley on her way to an NSC post.
I guess I don’t get this... I’m an educated old man and most of the repertoire I spout off is not original. I started early in life when my parents and older siblings taught me to talk. Even the ABC’s weren’t even my original construct.
I’ve followed her during and since the plagiarism episode, mostly through her appearances on the John Batchelor Show. Interestingly, Batchelor doesn’t have her on when members of the WSJ editorial board are guests, otherwise, she has been pro-Trump and very prescient. I wish her well. She screwed up, admitted it, and has fought to regain respectability.
If true, admit and face the music or deny and drag it out, drip-by-drip. What will Crowley do?
Yes, all those examples cited look like the worst kind of sloppiness, since almost all are factual, and would take not much effort at all to restate so that the info would not echo to and from the original sources. This may sound ridiculous, but I am 100% certain that no less than TWO of my own comments, made spontaneously on threads on FR YEARS ago, showed up in two different Ann Coulter books.
VERY good point!
it’s only a problem because she is not a democrat nor anti Trump. if she were a corrupt liberal it would be just fine.
Conservatives have to answer.. when they clean their side up... they can speak on this.. when sharpton pays his taxes.. we can talk....
Yeah I am new to posting here but I have been reading FR for many years. When I first posted a couple of things one long timer PMed me about not doing the research about what I was going to post. That was great advice. So now before I post something despite the initial desire because it fits the way I think I pause and do some research. In this case I was going to post that the article referenced did not provide any details. I went and found the original article and being a Monica fan I read it almost looking for the bias. But page after page of side by side nearly direct copying got me shaking my head. I do hope there is a good explanation or Monica stands up and owns it but it does provide fodder for the libtards to attack.
"Politico’s Glenn Thrush, who was exposed in WikiLeaks emails sending stories to Hillary Clinton staffers before publication, will be joining the New York Times to cover the White House, The Huffington Post reported Monday.
“We’re thrilled that Glenn Thrush is joining The Times,” Elisabeth Bumiller, The New York Times’ Washington bureau chief, told The Huffington Post. “He’s a premier political journalist, a master of breaking news and long-form story telling and a stellar addition to our White House team.”
While Bumiller described Thrush as a “premier political journalist,” in one email to Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta, Thrush chose to describe himself as a “hack.”
“No worries Because I have become a hack I will send u the whole section that pertains to u,” Thrush wrote to Podesta in an April 2015 email. “Please don’t share or tell anyone I did this Tell me if I fucked up anything.”" Read the rest here.
Hey, it worked for Biden.
“If true, admit and face the music or deny and drag it out, drip-by-drip. What will Crowley do?”
I don’t know what Crowley will do. I don’t even know what “face the music” means. I hope “face the music” doesn’t mean to do what Vince Foster is said to have done.
I’m almost certain liberals do not care too much about the morality of plagiarism, since they do not care about morality. That said, liberals will scream bloody murder and attempt to use the allegations to damage Trump.
Trump will stand firm, at least for a while, in defense of Crowley. If Trump begins to believe the issue will cause his presidency serious harm, I’d expect him to cut his losses.
Following Trump election, the Times’ public editor wrote that the paper will be making a conscious effort to not be “an echo chamber of liberal intellectualism.”
That had me choking on my beer
When they chastise obama for his book he did not write then we can talk
Old news....and she’s not being hired to write books
I had to write a paper for a seminary class last year. It was run through a scan of some sort to give a score that would or would not indicate plagiarism. Mine came back as ok.
Cigarette butts normally do that for me.
Love Monica, but if this is all true it is not good.
If true, then Harper Collins has a LOT to answer for. Every book goes through multiple editors, and if there had been questions about any of this, it was their responsibility to address it with Monica. I know, because I’ve worked with Harper.
What do you mean you “don’t believe” it?
I can see saying that it’s not that serious, but what is there that’s not to believe?
While I agree the article seems to correctly identify a good number of her sources, in EVERY CASE, the original wording is not used 100%.
All of it, has minor changes.
So I agree it seems to have correctly identified where she sourced from, NONE of it is completely lifted.
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