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.
My daughter had a college textbook that warned about plagiarism. It cited Biden as an example.
Did you see the link to the article at CNN Money? The Milton Friedman passage is but one of fifty or so examples and it is one of the shortest and tamest. I am waiting for Monica’s explanation. Maybe it’s a good one.
It is total crap. Just because two people cite the same article or document does mean there is any plagiarism. That was most of the “items”. Other items came from government sources. One is not required to cite those sources, they are public domain. Because more than one commentator uses the same verbiage from a government source with some minor changes to make their point, does not mean that they are plagiarizing each other.
From Paul Johnson’s “In Praise of Richard Nixon,” Commentary, October 1988:
“There was none of the personal corruption which had marked the rule of Lyndon Johnson, let alone the gross immoralities and security risks of John F. Kennedy’s White House.”
From Crowley’s “The Day Nixon Said Goodbye,” Wall Street Journal, August 9, 1999:
“There was none of the personal corruption that had marked the rule of Lyndon Johnson or the base immoralities and outrageous security risks of the Kennedy and Clinton White Houses.”
Johnson: “Nixon … consistently underestimated the unscrupulousness of his media enemies and their willingness to sacrifice the national interest in the pursuit of their institutional vendetta.”
Crowley: “Nixon, though always suspicious of his political enemies, consistently underestimated their ruthlessness and willingness to sacrifice the national interest in the pursuit of their institutional vendetta.”
Source: http://www.debbieschlussel.com/3593/wikipedia-chief-admits-doctoring-girlfriends-entry-did-jimmy-wales-date-monica-crowley-too-update-marsden-denies-says-wikipedia-editors-reviewed-entry-no-relationship-w-marsden-beyond/
couldnt it be said anyone on the left has been basically plaugerizing K.Marx for 100 years? They sure have not had a actual new idea in that time span——all they have spit out is create victims and spend other peoples money-—Marx originals.
I remember a high school lecture on plagiarism that specifically told us not to do that.
Is that anything as bad as stealing hundreds of million$ of taxpayer money
Why should it be a problem considering the fact that Uncle Joe Biden is sitting as President of the Senate?
Not likely to see you here again soon
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/chatterbox/1999/08/nixons_monica_stonewalls_about_plagiarism.html
If you can't even bother to tell us why that is bad for the average American citizen, you got nothing...
Did the podiatrist file a complaint?
So why are you so outraged?
Yeah, well big whoop!
The RATagandists have a yuge "truth-deficit" problem.
Psychobabble.
Speak for yourself.
There is nothing there, leftie, commie or anyone else.
If that is the best of what pissses you off, don't bother.
“As a citizen, a taxpayer and an American, how did that affect you?
Not likely to see you here again soon”
Not 100% sure what you mean. As a citizen, taxpayer and an American I feel like crap because I like Monica and I want her in that position. As I have posted repeatedly on this thread I hope there is a good explanation or she stands up and owns it.
What is it that you mean by “not likely to see you here again soon”?
Democrats are angry and hopeless, and they will be pulling their hair out for the next 4 years, and age ungracefully and die young, if they can’t get over losing the election.
Hmmm... sounds like the next 4-8 years are going to be entertaining for republicans.
Disagree.
When the SJWs and far lefties are attacking, never give up, never apologize, never resign. They’re in the business of merciless destruction.
Read this: http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/01/01/2016-just-start-going-win-2017/
The blame here is NOT on Monica. If there is, in fact, plagiarism issues, it’s all on the back of Harper Collins.
I don’t think this should stop Crowley from getting a job in the new administration. But it is weird that she does seem to have a problem with plagiarism. It not only happened with her book in 2012, but she was also found to have plagiarized parts of a Wall Street Journal editorial she wrote back in 1999. You would think she would have learned from this.
“It is hard to believe — with internet searching, it is impossible to get away with plagiarism.”
With Internet searching, it is nearly impossible to write something original.
How many ways are there to say, “Higher minimum wages hurt the poor” or “Countries with the highest taxes have the largest gaps between rich and poor”?
Whatever you write, somebody else has written it before.
From the CNN Money article:
In the book, Crowley lifted an entire section on Keynesian economics from the IAC-owned website Investopedia.They only linked to the Investopedia archived text. The article in question began with:
The Keynesian multiplier was introduced by Richard Kahn in the 1930s. It showed that any government spending brought about cycles of spending that increased employment and prosperity regardless of the form of the spending. For example, a $100 million government project, whether to build a dam or dig and refill a giant hole, might pay $50 million in pure labor costs. The workers then take that $50 million and, minus the average saving rate, spend it at various businesses. These businesses now have more money to hire more people to make more products, leading to another round of spending. This idea was at the core of the New Deal and the growth of the welfare state.Don't you see that Monica Crowley provided a statement attributed to its author, Richard Kahn. Therefore, it was not a plagiarism of, Andrew Beattie.
Did you even read the article at the link I provided?
I say again, until I get access to a LexisNexis platform to search for every instance of the 52 so called Monica Crowley plagiarisms for every possible occurrence in the the years before her book was published, I totally disregard with extreme disdain this attempt to disparage a brilliant conservative in an attempt to harm Donald Trump's administration.
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