Tag: integrity
4 Other Politicians Who Have Been Caught Plagiarizing

4 Other Politicians Who Have Been Caught Plagiarizing

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

By the time they reach grade school, most students understand that plagiarism is unacceptable. But politicians seem to have a hard time remembering not to do it.

On Wednesday, TheNew York Timesreported that Senator John Walsh (D-MT) lifted at least a quarter of his War College thesis from other sources, without crediting them. His final paper, on American Middle East policy, had sections that were identical to other policy journals and academic papers.

His entire conclusion, which listed six recommendations for “The Case for Democracy as a Long-Term Strategy,” was copied from a Carnegie Endowment for National Peace document.

“In all, Mr. Walsh’s recommendations section runs to more than 800 words, nearly all of it taken verbatim from the Carnegie paper, without any footnote to it,” the Times reports.

At first, Walsh denied that he had plagiarized anything, saying, “I didn’t do anything intentional here.”

But later, Walsh said that he was on medication for PTSD when he was writing his paper, and suggested that it may have been a factor in his poor decision making.

This news won’t help Walsh, whose military record and foreign policy acumen were chief selling points in his Senate race against Republican Rep. Steve Daines. Walsh is already trailing by 12.5 percent, according to the Real Clear Politicspoll average.

But Walsh isn’t the only prominent politician who’s been caught plagiarizing. Here are four other political leaders who have come under scrutiny for their less-than-original work.

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY)

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Paul, a possible 2016 presidential candidate, has had his fair share of plagiarism scandals. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow first pointed out that a 2013 speech referencing the film Gattaca was lifted directly from the movie’s Wikipedia page.

Then BuzzFeed reported that Paul had done the exact same thing in another speech, this time discussing the movie Stand and Deliver.

BuzzFeed also reported that Paul’s book, Government Bullies, borrowed from the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, and a Forbes article without any attribution.

The Washington Times later canceled his column after it came out that he hadn’t attributed one of his passages to The Week.

And Politico also revealed that the senator’s response to President Obama’s 2013 State of the Union address used similar language to an Associated Press report without citing it.

At first Paul defended himself, saying, “This is really about information and attacks coming from haters.”

But he eventually admitted that “I’m the boss, and things go out under my name, so it is my fault.”

Vice President Joe Biden

Photo: Abaca Press/MCT/Olivier Douliery

Photo: Abaca Press/MCT/Olivier Douliery

Biden may have been the Democratic presidential nominee in 1988 if he hadn’t started regularly using a speech by British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock without attribution.

Biden didn’t just use similar phrasing; he took actual biographical details from Kinnock’s life and tried to pass them off as his own. As it turns out, Biden wasn’t the first person in his family to attend college, and his ancestors weren’t coal miners.

Once the media started looking into Biden, they found that some of his speeches had also plagiarized Robert Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, and John F. Kennedy. Biden subsequently admitted that he had actually been busted for plagiarizing five pages of a term paper in law school.

Former Senator Scott Brown (R-MA)

Photo: Talk Radio News Service via Flickr

Photo: Talk Radio News Service via Flickr

In 2011, Democratic group American Bridge 21st Century noticed that a section of Brown’s campaign website was taken directly from former North Carolina senator Elizabeth Dole.

His message to students was exactly the same as Dole’s campaign kickoff speech from 2002, except that it was missing the first line introducing her.

Brown’s campaign claimed that Dole’s speech was only supposed to have been the basis for the education section of his website.

“Senator Dole’s website served as one of the models for Senator Brown’s website when he first took office. During construction of the site, the content on this particular page was inadvertently transferred without being rewritten,” spokesperson John Donnelly told the Boston Globe.

Russian President Vladimir Putin

AFP Photo/Maxim Shipenkov

AFP Photo/Maxim Shipenkov

Plagiarism might not seem like a big deal compared to everything else Putin’s done, but in 2006, Brookings Institution researchers accused the former KBG agent of stealing his economics dissertation from work done by University of Pittsburgh professors 20 years prior.

The researchers say that 16 of 20 pages of the dissertation’s opening are taken from the paper, “Strategic Planning and Policy.”

“It all boils down to plagiarism,” Brookings Institution’s Clifford G. Gaddy said. “Whether you’re talking about a college-level term paper, not to mention a formal dissertation, there’s no question in my mind that this would be plagiarism.”

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What Fox News Isn’t

A few words on what Fox News is.

The question has, of course, been debated forever. Fox says it is, as the name would suggest, a news network. Its critics say it is actually the propaganda arm of the Republican Party and that its highest loyalty is not to accuracy, fairness or other journalistic values but to the furtherance of the party line. Not that any sentient life form should need the help, but events have recently arranged themselves such as to make painfully obvious which view is truth and which is tripe.

As it happens, one of the biggest news stories of the past few weeks has been the phone-hacking scandal that now ensnares media baron Rupert Murdoch. For those who somehow missed it, it involves revelations that reporters at Murdoch’s News of the World British tabloid routinely paid police sources for information and hacked into people’s cellphones, including that of a murdered 13-year-old girl.

That’s led to the shutdown of the 168-year-old newspaper, a spate of resignations and arrests, hearings in Parliament, rumored hearings in Congress and criminal investigations here and in the UK. This story is a gift from the news gods, and any news organization worthy of the name would jump on it like a trampoline. Most have. Fox has not.

The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism just surveyed reportage of the story in two time frames: July 6-8 and 11-15. In that period, according to Pew, CNN devoted almost 170 minutes to the story, MSNBC about 145. Fox? About 30. That bears repeating: One of the biggest stories of the summer gets, over the course of six days, a half-hour of attention from Fox “News.”

Now, let us be fair and balanced here. Fox is owned by Murdoch, and the last thing any news organization wants is to be in the awkward position of reporting on itself. To have to air that which might embarrass or damage colleagues or bosses is the definition of a no-win situation, especially since there will always be doubts, from within and without, about your ability to do so fairly. But when professionalism demands, this is what you do.

When CBS News’ report on President George W. Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard turned out not to be credible, CBS reported it.

When Jayson Blair hoodwinked and humiliated the New York Times, the New York Times reported it.

When NPR was mortified by a deceptively edited hidden camera sting, NPR reported it.

Fox’s failure to report — and allow viewers to decide — speaks volumes and offers a definitive answer to the question of what Fox is.

It is the nation’s leading manufacturer of false outrage and fake fury — War on Christmas! War on Christmas! — the top supplier of bogeymen for those who need to feel terrorized in order to feel alive.

It is America’s No. 1 distributor of misinformation — Hide Nana! The death panels are coming! — a warehouse of conspiracy theories, junk history and dubious “facts” given credit by virtually no one who does not watch Fox.

It is a noisemaker, a box of cacophony from which reason will seldom emerge unscathed. And it is a bovine excreta machine.

But a news organization? No. That is a designation you have to earn.

Step 1: Report the news.

Leonard Pitts is a columnist for the Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readers may contact him via e-mail at lpitts@miamiherald.com.

(c) 2011 The Miami Herald Distributed by Tribune Media Services, Inc.