Tag: ethics

Maureen Dowd odds and ends

As the Maureen Dowd plagiarism story continues to wind down, a few stray pieces:

  • Despite Jack Shafer’s splendid suggestion that Dowd offer a full accounting of what happened in today’s column, she instead weighs in with an insipid imaginary conversation between Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Gah.
  • Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall, whose words were appropriated without credit by Dowd in her Sunday column, says he “never thought it was intentional,” and “that’s pretty much the end of it.”
  • The New York Post has picked up my Guardian column on the matter. Sure, I’m getting a kick out of it. But I’m also less than thrilled to be drafted by Rupert Murdoch into his ongoing pissing match with the Sulzbergers.

Dowd was just talking with a friend

I don’t think New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd committed a hanging offense. But I continue to be troubled by her explanation of how she came to lift a paragraph from Josh Marshall’s megablog, Talking Points Memo.

OK, so Dowd was “talking” in a “spontaneous” manner with a friend, as she put it to the Huffington Post. Fine. I had decided to assume for the purpose of moving on that by “talking” she meant “e-mailing.” It would be completely believable if she had copied and pasted from a friend’s e-mail who had volunteered to help her write her column. Lame, but believable.

And yet here is what she told a blog called the Nytpicker, via e-mail:

no, we were going back and forth discussing the topic of the column and he made this point and i thought it was a good one and wanted to weave it in;
i just didn’t realize it was josh marshall’s point, and we’ve now given him credit
my friend didn’t want to be quoted; but of course i would have been happy to give credit to another writer, as i often do

I don’t see how you can possibly construe this as an e-mail exchange, especially when, as you will see, the Nytpicker had contacted her a second time trying to clarify exactly how Dowd had managed to reproduce Marshall’s rather lengthy graf almost word for word. Hey, she was just talking with a friend. Right.

(Via an e-mail to Media Nation citing National Review’s Media Blog, which in turn got it from DailyKos.)

Dowd’s modified limited hangout

Jack Shafer points out in Slate that New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd deserves credit for not going into hiding, not whining and not claiming that what she did wasn’t plagiarism. I’ll give her that.

In an e-mail to Media Nation, Shafer also fingered an attribution I’d messed up in my Guardian column, which has now been corrected. I’d misattributed a Dowd e-mail to the wrong source. Thank you, Jack.

The blogosphere versus Maureen Dowd

Simon Owens has the latest on the Maureen Dowd plagiarism story, with quotes from Dowd and a no-comment from Josh Marshall.

The New York Times has already updated Dowd’s column to credit Marshall, but there’s no acknowledgment that there was a problem in the first place.

OK, this is premature, but here is Dowd friend Howell Raines’ 1998 takedown of the Boston Globe, which he chastises for failing to fire star columnist Mike Barnicle after he’d been caught plagiarizing one-liners from a book by George Carlin.

I would imagine Times editors are going to have to do something even if Dowd’s explanation pans out. I’d also guess that the next 24 hours will be key. Right now, we can assume that dozens (hundreds?) of bloggers are scouring every column she’s ever written.

If she can survive that, then she’ll get through this. If not, then all bets are off.

Lynch’s non-signing statement

Meaghan Maher, press secretary to U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch, has sent along the following statement as to why Lynch didn’t sign the Massachusetts congressional delegation’s letter to New York Times Co. chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. asking him not to shut down the Boston Globe:

Congressman Lynch felt that, while he respects the decision of others who decided otherwise, given his own position, it was inappropriate and a conflict of interest for him to sign onto this letter.

The congressman who wasn’t there

Every member of the Massachusetts delegation except one has signed a letter to New York Times Co. chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. asking that he keep the Boston Globe open past the Thursday deadline he’s set for the Globe’s unions to come up with $20 million in concessions.

The one: Rep. Stephen Lynch of South Boston.

The letter, signed by Sens. Ted Kennedy and John Kerry as well as the other nine House members, reads as follows:

Dear Mr. Sulzberger:

We are concerned over the future of The Boston Globe in light of reports that the New York Times Company is seriously considering shutting the doors of our hometown newspaper.

For well over a century, The Globe has been an immense asset to Boston and all of New England. It’s been the paper of record; a force for positive change and civic activism; a cultural touch point; and a workplace that has always valued the contributions of every employee from typesetters, press operators, mailers and drivers to reporters and editors. It’s been a consistent source of news for the people of Massachusetts, and a constant reminder that the press serves an indispensable role in our free society.

We understand the serious financial challenges facing the newspaper industry today. The ramifications, however, of closing The Boston Globe would far outlive the current recession. The Globe has a long-established public trust with this community and the New England region. Its closure would be an irreplaceable loss for our city, state, and region and for countless readers across the nation.

The hard-working men and women of The Boston Globe know better than anyone that sacrifices will be necessary to continue the newspaper. We urge you to treat The Globe fairly and to work together on a solution to this immediate crisis that preserves the newspaper for the future.

We appreciate your consideration of this request and we look forward to discussing The Globe’s future with you at your convenience.

I’ve sent an e-mail to the Boston Newspaper Guild office, which released the letter, asking about Lynch’s absence. I’ll send an e-mail to Lynch as soon as I’ve posted this. If I hear anything, I’ll let you know.

Of course, it hardly needs to be said that the letter is another example of the awkward embrace between Globe staff members and the political establishment that we’ve seen from the moment that this drama began to unfold — something Jessica Heslam and Hillary Chabot wrote about in the Boston Herald last Friday.

A weird, sad tale comes to an end

At least one chapter in the weird, sad tale of Tania deLuzuriaga has come to an end, as she has resigned from the Boston Globe. As you may know, deLuzuriaga was recently found to have exchanged inappropriate e-mails of a sexual nature with a high-ranking school official when she was a reporter for the Miami Herald.

Journalists know they can’t secretly carry on an affair with people they cover. At the Miami New Times, Kyle Munzenrieder reminds us of the great Abe Rosenthal rule: “You can fuck an elephant if you want to, but if you do you can’t cover the circus.” DeLuzuriaga’s ethical breach was a serious one.

But to the extent that some people at the Globe agitated for her to leave, as Christine McConville reported in the Boston Herald last week, I think her situation raises an ethical question for management, too: Should wrongdoing in a previous job be held against someone if she is performing competently and without incident in her current job?

I’ve done no independent reporting on this, and there may well be issues about which I’m not aware. But assuming deLuzuriaga kept her personal and professional lives separate while she was at the Globe, it strikes me that that should have been good enough.

Gender hypocrisy raises its ugly head, too. As Amy Derjue notes at Boston Daily, and Rick Sawyer observes at Bostonist, deLuzuriaga’s erstwhile and extremely married alleged paramour not only has paid no penalty, he just got a promotion. Nice.

Paper blows pol’s cover

Now here’s an interesting ethical dilemma. James Donahue, a Haverhill city councilor, apparently posted comments on the Eagle-Tribune’s Web site under perhaps as many as 38 different screen names. How do we know this? Because the Eagle-Tribune exposed him last Saturday.

Donahue acknowledged using multiple screen names, but said that at least some of the 38 names traced to his computer were those of supporters hanging around his house. The city’s mayor, James Fiorentini, a frequent recipient of Donahue’s barbs, admitted that he, too, has been known to respond to his critics without revealing his identity.

Here’s the question. Even if you grant that what Donahue did was stupid, was it ethical for the Eagle-Tribune to expose him? There is nothing in the comment box telling you to use your real name. (I’ve posted a few pseudonymous comments at the Salem News’ site — part of the same chain as the Tribune.) It seems to me that the Tribune used proprietary information to embarrass Donahue, and without giving him fair warning that he was doing anything wrong.

It’s not clear exactly how the Tribune tracked Donahue down. The comment box does ask for a valid e-mail address. But the story says the posts were tracked to “Donahue’s personal computer,” which makes me think someone traced the messages to his IP address. If Google had done this, there would be an uproar.

The paper defends its outing in an editorial, saying in part:

It is not the general practice of this newspaper to seek the identity of those who comment on stories, although there is no explicit guarantee of anonymity. Virtually all the management of the comments section of the online edition is aimed at removing posts that are profane, racist or personal attacks.

However, one of the forum moderators noticed a pattern of posts under dozens of different names, and then discovered that they had all come from the same computer address. When it became clear that they were coming from the computer of an elected public official, it became our obligation to let the public know.

The average citizen does not take an oath to serve the public. An elected official does. An attempt to deceive the public is clearly not serving it, and a public official who does so is not only undeserving of the protection of confidentiality, but deserves public criticism.

Now Donahue’s in trouble with his fellow councilors. And I would imagine there’s going to be some awkwardness, at the very least, over his job as a teacher at a public school. (“What kind of an example … ?”)

I’m not sure I buy the Eagle-Tribune’s argument. It seems to me that the paper has chosen to humiliate Donahue for doing something the paper itself implicitly invited him to do, and that it used information available to no one else. If the Tribune had caught Donahue doing the same thing on, say, a non-Tribune blog, that would be fine. But this comes pretty close to entrapment, does it not?

I’m still pondering this, though, and would be curious to hear from Media Nation readers what you think. I promise not to trace your IP addresses. I guarantee you that I wouldn’t know how.