Plagiarism Alleged In Ann Coulter's 'Godless' Book

wizbangblog.com ^ | June 12, 2006 | Kevin Aylward

[tobyhill]

"is" and "was" are two different meanings and the 2nd one isn't even close.

[originalbuckeye]

Is it considered plagiarism when you simply restate a fact? I would think that every journalist would be in jeopardy if that is the case.

[Thrusher]

And still... no one challenges the message, they only attack the messanger.

[kenboy]

Depends on what your definition of "is" is, eh?

[Bikers4Bush]

When you're speaking to incidents of fact there are only a few ways to phrase it.

The dog jumped over the fence.

The canine hurdled the barrier doesn't exactly say the same thing.

[Mr. K]

in a book with HUNDREDS or sources noted, I would not count one or two missed quotes as example of plagerism.

I mean look at the rest of the book- why would she quote hundreds of sources, and then plgerize these two statements?

[Psalm 73]

Oh puhleeez - there aren't too many ways of stating four facts in the same sentence.
I guess she could have used the term "very large" instead of "massive", but boy is that ever splitting hairs.
If that's the best they can come up with........

[MHGinTN]

Let's hope this leads thousands of liberal blogfools to buy Ann's book and pour throught he pages in search of grist for their liberal spittle ... one or two might actually 'get out of the religion' and stop being liberal lickspittlists.

[mbynack]

This is hillarious. I just looked up the quote "The massive Dickey-Lincoln Dam" and found out that the Portland Newspaper was quoting an article in Townhall. Ann Coulter is a guest writer in Townhall, so she is being accused of plagerizing her own work.

[Madeleine Ward]

Restating a fact is not plagiarism.

Restating it in exactly the same form is.

The first example is almost verbatum.

The second is not.

Keeping in mind that with small amounts of information, there are only so many ways to say it.

Had I written this, I would have changed the sentence structure, or leave it as she has, and just cite the publication.

[tobyhill]

If this is plagiarism then every journalist is guilty.

[Clara Lou]

I'm no expert on plagiarism, but they're going to have to find either many more like the first example shown, or else multiple examples of larger word segments that are clearly a copy of someone else's work.
At this moment, to me, the plagiarism charge seems late and lame.

[madprof98]

Meanwhile, for his campaign kickoff, Joe Biden will be doing The Gettysburg Address.

[Feiny]

Because those examples are not plagiarism.

[sandbar]

So if CNN uses the same language to report the same incident as MSNBC, that's plagerism?

Boy, all media is in BIG trouble.

[SAJ]

Aw, c'mon, guy. Even moonbats need a hobby.

;^)

[petro45acp]

It is simple...

Ms. Coulter is right

The Coulter haters are wrong...That includes you Mr. 'sensitive' Billy O!

In a book so thoroughly end-noted (My only criticism is USE FOOTNOTES!....please), these two examples are silly, their highlighting is trite, and the haters simply need to:

SFU
SFD

Cheers,
Top sends

[trebb]

I wonder if she got her info from the same source the Portland Press did??? It seems a little bit of a stretch to claim that info that lines up with a newspaper article could be called plagiarism... If that's the case, newspapers are the biggest plagiarists around.

[Paradox]

I heard about this on a conservative radio program, some professor at BERKLEY has a program that he uses to scan text and look for plagiarism. It must have a hyoooge database. He came up with at least 3 instances where he claims she committed it. For me the examples were like, "big deal". I am sure if I wrote a long treatise, I would inadvertently plagiarize, simply because some sentences and phrases would be committed to memory, in such a way as to make me think they are my own.