List of Plagiarism Controversies - Journalism

Journalism

• In 1999, writer and television commentator Monica Crowley allegedly plagiarized part of an article she wrote for the Wall Street Journal (August 9, 1999), called "The Day Nixon Said Goodbye." The Journal ran an apology the same week. Timothy Noah of Slate Magazine later wrote of the striking similarities in her article to phrases Paul Johnson used in his 1988 article for Commentary called "In Praise of Richard Nixon".
• New York Times reporter Jayson Blair plagiarized articles and manufactured quotations in stories, including stories regarding Jessica Lynch and the Beltway sniper attacks. He and several editors from the Times resigned in June 2003.
• Moorestown Township, New Jersey, high-school student Blair Hornstine had her admission to Harvard University revoked in July 2003 after she was found to have passed off speeches and writings by famous figures, including Bill Clinton, as hers in articles she wrote as a student journalist for a local newspaper.
• Long-time Baltimore Sun columnist Michael Olesker resigned on January 4, 2006, after being accused of plagiarizing other journalists' articles in his columns.
• Conservative blogger Ben Domenech, soon after he was hired to write a blog for the Washington Post in 2006, was found to have plagiarized a number of columns and articles he'd written for his college newspaper and National Review Online, lifting passages from a variety of sources ranging from well-known pundits to amateur film critics. Domenech ultimately apologized and resigned.
• Boston Globe columnist Mike Barnicle was forced to resign when it was revealed that amid other allegations, his Globe column dated August 2, 1998 contained ten passages lifted from Brain Droppings, a book published in 1997 by George Carlin.
• A Pakistani ezine, Wecite, was found to have plagiarised as many as 11 articles in its May 2007 issue, many of them verbatim, from various sources on the web, including Hindustan Times, Rediff, Blogcritics, Vis-a-Vis magazine and Slate magazines. The ezine management pulled the website and apologised, terming the plagiarism a product of the "mis-use" of authority by writers and editors of the magazines, and promising to deal with the plagiarists accordingly but "by no means" letting the "genuine efforts of its writers, administration, and management suffer for it".
• In an October 2007 column for The Sun-Herald, Australian television presenter David Koch plagiarised verbatim three lines from a column in The Sunday Telegraph. Koch stated to Media Watch: "... it has since been pointed out to me that these 3 sentences look as though they came from a similar story in another newspaper. While that was not obvious in the research brief it isn't an excuse and I take full responsibility for the mistake."
• In August 2008, Slate Magazine's music critic Jody Rosen accused The Bulletin, an alternative weekly published in Texas, of numerous instances of plagiarism.

• In May 2009, Maureen Dowd was accused of copying an entire sentence from a Talking Points Memo blog. While she denied reading the blog, Dowd did not deny the plagiarism charges and the New York Times issued a correction.

• In 2012, it was reported that Jonah Lehrer self-plagiarized several works he submitted to The New Yorker. All five of these articles now appear on The New Yorker website with editor's notes listing the articles' previous places of publishing, including The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, Wired, and The Guardian. A correction posted on The New Yorker website claims that Lehrer also misrepresented the source of a quote taken from an article by another author. Lehrer has since apologized for the reuse of his own work.