Saturday, January 12, 2008

Coincidence Or Intellectual Theft?

McBride's blogging may have slowed down greatly, but she still has her contractual obligations. In today GMToday, she has an column about "her" take of the presidential election so far. Most of it her usual snarky bashing just about everyone but Fred Thompson. But what is interesting is how she starts her column:

News flash to the mainstream media: The presidential election is not "American Idol." Just because a candidate loses a single state, doesn’t mean the candidate is off the show.


This is eerily similar to a post written by Brian Fraley three days ago. In this well written post, he starts with this:

Some friendly advice for media pundits, bloggers and other observers of the 2008 Presidential race:

Politics is not a reality television show. Contestants do not get voted off the island with every week’s new episode.


Nowhere in her column does McBride credit Fraley for that line. She did change it slightly, so I doubt that it would qualify as plagiarism. (Is there a lawyer in the house that could offer an opinion? iT? How about an English teacher? Jay?) However, it is close enough that it is pretty apparent this is where she got it from.

One would think that a teacher of journalism, teaching at a college level, would have enough ethics to acknowledge the source in her column.

7 comments:

  1. Had you not considered the possibility that it's a classic example of great minds thinking alike? No? Anyone? Bueller?

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  2. It's Buellers day off.

    To have great minds means to have more than one. I think we come up short in this case.

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  3. Don't want to plagiarize but maybe one of the minds is kept in a jar on the table by the door.

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  4. I read the column and she used a lot of words. She did steal them all. Maybe she just borrowed some from the dictionary.

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  5. Let's all leave her a message a promise to call in to her radio talk show if she airs it tonight.

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  6. She's also still on her "That's a surprise" kick going back to her wordy Iowa Caucus post. Her column and her Iowa blog were both more rambling bouncing off wall regurgitation than normal even for her. Come to think of it so was her Governor Dreyfus post. Maybe this is new journalism technique she's teaching.

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  7. Naw, it's one of the oldest journalism techniques. A sign of an old journalist, bereft of new ideas.

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