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Globe and Mail's reaction to claims a columnist plagiarized unveils a world of journalism taboos.
Globe and Mail columnist Margaret Wente responds to accusations in a column posted online late Monday evening.
Four seasoned journos pull no punches. We invite you to add your own reviews.
The former Globe star writer's self-published depression memoir is a hot seller, and she's having a blast teaching young journos.
The Globe and Mail experienced the wrong end of a revolution over the weekend. The Twitterati stormed the Bastille because of the paper's refusal to acknowledge a blogger's claims that columnist Margaret Wente was plagiarizing some of her screeds.
The story is still unfolding, but it appears the rebels have won. As this piece went to bed, The Globe's editor-in-chief, John Stackhouse, took a shot at damage control by announcing that Wente would be disciplined.
"The journalism in this instance did not meet the standards of The Globe and Mail, in terms of sourcing, use of quotation marks and reasonable credit for the work of others," he told his own media reporter.
This is a turning point for legacy media in Canada as the news and information gatekeepers. The public forced The Globe to address allegations that have been circulating for at least three years by calling them out in the public square -- Twitter, the blogosphere, and The Globe's own online comments section.
Meanwhile, Wente's column defending herself is doing little to quell critics. Her explanations don't speak to most of the incidents the blog Media Culpa details, and she dismisses blogger Carol Wainio as "a self-styled media critic" with a vendetta against her.
"She has been publicly complaining about my work for years. Her website, Media Culpa, is an obsessive list of accusations involving alleged plagiarism, factual errors, attribution lapses, and much else," Wente writes.
Apparently Wente hasn't been keeping up with the TwitterView of her nemesis. Media Culpa blogger Wainio has taken on the sheen of a Woodstein. The woman who spoke truth to power. The one who afflicted the comfortable and comforted the afflicted (presumably Wente's long-suffering readers).
Wainio is declining to speak to media and told former journalism professor John Miller that she isn't looking for attention.
"I have no qualifications to discuss these things," she told Miller. "It's not a human interest story, it's an ethics story, and best to talk to people who know that field."
The Globe's public editor Sylvia Stead publicly addressed the accusations on Friday, and her post might have put an end to all this, had she not marshaled such an inept defence of Wente.
Her one brief post offered a stunningly disingenuous response to a legitimate complaint. In defending Wente, Stead allows that "there appears to be some truth to the concerns but not on every account."
Okay, so it's just a little bit of plagiarism then? Which I assume is like being just a little bit pregnant.
In her response to calls for an explanation, Stead referred to Wainio as an "anonymous blogger." Then there's another line that "it takes a little time to properly look into these matters." Waino responded to that by reporting she had been in correspondence with Stead over her concerns on May 26, 2011, more than a year ago. Wainio quotes the letter she received in response and it suggests thinly veiled threats of a libel suit if Wainio didn't stop posting her investigations of Wente's columns.
Stead's piece reads like a high-handed attempt to discredit a legitimate critic by pretending she's too obscure to acknowledge. Wainio, by the way, is an artist and a professor at the University of Ottawa. She makes a persuasive case clearly and well, with none of the ad hominem attacks we associate with the blogosphere. Hardly the sort of crank letter-writer that all newsrooms ignore.
Loaded with taboos
Just as revolution in one country used to make the rest of the monarchy nervous, The Globe may well be sparking grief for other old media corps. Much of the chatter has been about how old media have failed to cover what the wags are calling "Pilferin' Peggy." Even the Brits are on it -- The Guardian reported the Canadian kerfuffle Monday. Postmedia's Chris Selley commented too, but the Toronto Star -- the big gun -- was silent until late Monday night, reporting that Wente was disciplined. Particularly surprising is that CBC Radio's Q, which employs Wente as a media panelist to curl a lip at the sins of other journalists, hasn't touched the controversy.
The first old media writer to break ranks posted on Sunday. Maclean's Colby Cosh wrote a witty, insightful piece analyzing the accusations and the defence themselves. He notes that some of Wente's prose bears a remarkable similarity to pieces by well-read Ottawa Citizen columnist Dan Gardner, and condemns what he calls Stead's papal bull.
"If neither Wente nor Stead believes that Wente had Gardner's piece immediately to hand while composing her own column, then the rest of us are, on statistical grounds, left with no alternative but to declare them the biggest pair of Siamese-twin imbeciles of all time."
While conspiracy theorists who've never seen the inside of a newsroom like to suggest that the lack of coverage on Wente's long-rumoured liberties imply mass media solidarity, that's simply wrong. Sure, for some writers laying low might be a case of careerism and keeping an eye on a potential employer in an ever-shrinking market. Or it could be a general sense that those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. But for the seasoned old hacks in the big outlets I'd wager it's something else.
Media tend not to report on each other, outside of business stories, because it looks petty and self-serving. Sometimes other writers are friends. Just as often, they're enemies. Either way, no one wants to be predatory. One columnist exploiting the misery of another looks like schadenfreude. Or worse: a blatant attempt to discredit a competitor or seduce another outlet's readers and advertisers by showing them up.
Despite the self-righteous tone of the Twittersphere, plagiarism is not as cut-and-dried as one might think. No one can own an idea. (Copyright protects the original expression of an idea, not the idea itself.) Sometimes something in the zeitgeist inspires opinionators all over to pen their views on a subject. Sometimes they're similar. Last month everyone took a whack at the nature of criticism, for example, probably sparked by widespread arts cuts in newspapers. But who knows what prompted it. I doubt they were stealing.
On a personal level, I'd be surprised if there is a writer who didn't feel a pang of compassion for Wente as the online mob, with torch and TwitForks, grows. I'm no fan of Wente's column, but she served The Globe long and faithfully and deserved more protection than her bosses gave her -- especially if it meant saving her from herself.
Stead is much pilloried over this, but she too has been badly served by The Globe. She's in a no-win job. Generally a public editor is the public's representative and is drawn from some outside body -- academia, journalism think tanks, far-away papers. She shouldn't be an insider with more than 30 years at the company. Someone who, as retired J-professor John Miller puts it, "drank the Kool-Aid."
Stead reported to editor-in-chief John Stackhouse when this began and she writes using the royal "we," indicating she is the voice of the paper, not the readers' representative. In other words, she's a PR person. She can't be expected to investigate her own boss or her own actions of a year ago. Given the way it was structured, the public editor position is little more than window dressing.
Stackhouse also announced Stead would now be reporting directly to the publisher to eliminate the perceived conflict of interest -- although not the problem of having a lifer investigating her friends and enemies in the company. (No word on whether Stead is being disciplined.)
Traditionally in newspapers, the buck stops with the editor-in-chief, and it was striking just how long it took Stackhouse to stand up and speak to the controversy he describes as occurring in the last several days.
Circling the drain
Perhaps the most revealing thing that appeared last week at the paper had nothing to do with Wente or Stead at all. It was a column from The Globe's very own Princess Diarist, Leah MacLaren, in which she uses the paper to sell her own house. Which is charming, I gather, from her gushing copy. Just $599,000 and only "a dog's trot away from shops and cafes on Queen Street West and the leafy splendor of Trinity Bellwoods Park" in Toronto.
I'd say that was The Globe’s Marie Antoinette moment: let them eat shelter porn.
Journalism was once defined as news gathering and analysis done on behalf of citizens, and I've taken that to include good consumer reporting -- which is something different than shilling for advertisers. But increasingly, The Globe reminds me of the sort of corporations that have come to define customer service as the customer's obligation to serve the company.
By contrast Wainio did the work of journalists: telling us something new that is in our best interest to know. The paper should have thanked her quietly a year ago, and possibly hired her to keep up the good work.
They could have handled the allegations then as newspapers usually handle these things -- privately. Most outlets have some variation on a three-strikes rule to allow for honest mistakes and because of a recognition that blatant plagiarism is less a sin than a psych problem.
Borrowing from such little known rags as the New York Times or a high-profile columnist like Gardner is practically the definition of career suicide. Responsible editors -- and decent human beings -- wouldn't just investigate the writer; they'd help her if there turns out to be "some truth" to the claim. Show me a plagiarist and I'll show you someone struggling and in need of some support.
Which is what any experienced journo will tell you -- we hate the sin, but we have compassion for the sinners. Most are in real trouble.
So what kind of a newspaper starts burying the truth and circling the wagons?
I'd suggest it's the same kind of newspaper that's circling the drain.
That's what I think the Wente brouhaha and the MacLaren real estate ad are really telling us: that The Globe is moving away from being a newspaper in the sense of being an outlet that delivers information that serves readers. It views them -- us -- as little more than something to exploit. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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Frank
38 weeks ago
Wow
Wente caught in the headlights, I love it. Her idiocies, for example, "7 things you can't say in Canada" (Reader's Digest) have been polluting this country for far too long.
Norman Farrell
38 weeks ago
Good article except for defence of MSM silence
There's an unwritten rule that when new governments take office, incoming people don't look too hard at the ethical behaviour of the outgoing. Political criticism is OK but don't raise individual ethical matters not already in the public forum. Remember, the shoe will be on another foot, eventually.
Professionals, engineers and doctors for example, are taught to pull punches when publicly reviewing work of colleagues.
Similarly in journalism. Accusations of plagiarism swirled around Wente for three years. Wainio published a powerful piece Sept. 18, widely repeated in alternative media. MSM stayed quiet for five days, not daring to criticize a writer who has never refrained from hammering people with no access to media.
Ms Rupp does her otherwise fine analysis a disservice when she writes there is no "mass media solidarity." Of course there is. Why else has Wente been shielded from discussions of her journalistic misconduct?
Sil
38 weeks ago
A "pang of compassion"? For Wente?
Put me in the camp of those who have none. I might have... if she hadn't made a career out of being absolutely without sympathy for anyone who has made some mistakes in life. I have compassion for those who deserve it.
Margaret Wente deserves none. Her position is that of a condescending scold, particularly as she (with her two English degrees) essentially lectures young people that if they don't all get highly trained professional degrees to be accountants, doctors or engineers, their suffering in a bleak economy is their own fault and a product of laziness - as if everyone being a highly trained professional is a realistic economic model (in addition to being unrealistic, what does economics teach her about what happens to labor rates paid when formerly scarce skills become widely available?)
Margaret Wente is on record as saying that kids at universities should be given zeroes if they are caught for plagiarism and is renowned for being a shallow and condescending "writer", so let her lie in the bed that she made for herself.
Certainly she's not going to change anyway - her written response yesterday was a classic passive-aggressive non-apology, and typical Wente. She may not have permanently lost her position of moralizing from on high at the Globe, but at least the world will be a nicer place for a few weeks.
snert
38 weeks ago
Very quickly.....
plagiarism hunters will put themselves out of work. There are so many words in electronic format that it will soon be impossible to say or write anything without it being duplicated elsewhere.
Just put the whole damned article behind quotes then cite one individual then let them take the rap.
Kreditanstalt
38 weeks ago
Thank you snert for injecting
Thank you snert for injecting some common sense.
Margaret Wente has a habit of speaking uncomfortable truths that make the "Canadian Values" crowd distinctly uncomfortable, if not enraged, while Carol Wainio is probably one of those rabid crusading "progressives" angling for a government job...
And I do find this obsession with demanding backed-up facts, statistics, numbers, examples, accurate quotes from big-name sources, citations and footnotes in every piece of writing ABOMINABLE. Such wriing is a poor excuse for good journalism, which expresses intelligent, principled OPINIONS based on observation.
Doug Park
38 weeks ago
Burn baby burn
I don't think I ever read Wente's column after the first time (if all the way through then)and about a year ago I stopped reading the G&M completely because they were writing articles that were open trolls for racists and violence freaks and then allowing the racist/violent comments to remain. As far as I'm concerned the G&M could simply disappear and it would be no loss.
Frank
38 weeks ago
Th Globe has to fire her
She copied the words of other journalists verbatim and she "created" sources.
In her column on "Occupy" she said she spoke to a young guy who was going to get a law degree. Gave his name. Turns out she didn't. It never happened. The guy was never at Occupy.
Said she talked to a young woman, gave her name, but what she actually did was read a different Globe article from a few weeks before and quoted her.
Quoted a Dan Gardner paragraph as her own and then denied having done it.
Her only response has been to attack the Ottawa professor who has been documenting her plagiarism as being on a vendetta.
So what if the professor is going after her, the professor is right. Its like Clifford Olson complaining the police are on a vendetta against him. The crimes still happened.
Wente has zero credibility. She's been exposed as a liar.
Doug Park
38 weeks ago
Heh!
Thank you, Kreditanstalt and snert, for the lovely attack (a la the Bush administration) on those darn, useless verifiable facts. It's worth noting, of course, that a big part of the problem in Wente's personal situation is apparently (and I'm working, as I say, on others' reports here since I don't read her myself, just as Kred. it seems has "probably" never read Waino's blog) she has made a point of bloviating about how OTHER people - students say - must follow all the rules of fact and citation, or be punished heavily if they don't. If a person does not believe that plagiarism is bad, well then he or she can make that argument; but, if that same person has been attacking others and demanding they be punished, and then is caught doing the same thing herself...
Frank
38 weeks ago
Kredit
But of course you have no problem with journalists that have been fired, including at the Globe (Jan Wong), for writing things that management didn't like being said about the guy they endorsed for prime minister?
Plagiarism and fictional sources and lack of facts are good with you if it attacks people that believe in what you call "Canadian values"?
Are you saying that people who attack "Canadian values" can't be expected not to make up sources, use facts and not plagiarize?
That would be cool because I was thinking the same thing.
Frank
38 weeks ago
Kredit
But of course you have no problem with journalists that have been fired, including at the Globe (Jan Wong), for writing things that management didn't like being said about the guy they endorsed for prime minister?
Plagiarism and fictional sources and lack of facts are good with you if it attacks people that believe in what you call "Canadian values"?
Are you saying that people who attack "Canadian values" can't be expected not to make up sources, use facts and not plagiarize?
That would be cool because I was thinking the same thing.
Kreditanstalt
38 weeks ago
@rank
Jan Wong was attacked because management didn't like her opinion on Quebec. Quite different from beng castigated by a rabid blgger.
I'm saying that whether someone "makes up" cources and citations or uses "unsubstantiated" (but common knowledge!) facts, we shouldn't get lost in this minutiae.
A well- and logically-argued opinion can be supportable common sense without the necessity of making one's writing look like an academic paper. And I think most of us read even The Tyee for opinion and on principle, not as some kind of encyclopedia...
Kreditanstalt
38 weeks ago
Here we go...
Here's an example of what happens when a zealously ambitious one-issue critic so takes apart a piece of writing that the underlying but all-important POINT and OPINION is lost in a jumble of footnoted "errors" and "inaccuracies"...
http://www.cleanbreak.ca/2011/08/29/tsk-tsk-globe-and-mail-again-runs-intentionally-deceptive-wente-column-on-green-energy-electric-vehicles/
Frank
38 weeks ago
Kredit
She doesn't write "well and logically argued opionion" pieces.
What she does is make things up and plagiarize other writers.
You may think creating a person and putting them at Occupy and putting words in their mouth which you can use as a strawman to attack them is good journalism, most people would disagree with you.
LeftRightLeft
38 weeks ago
Good article but...
I think Leah McLaren and Margaret Wente are the two worst writers at the Globe and Mail. Most of their journalists are top notch, so tarnishing the entire paper as a result of these two's actions isn't fair. Particularly when one looks at the G&M's competition, which are basically just advertisements for the real estate industry. If you are looking for a real conflict of interest story in mainstream media look into the real estate industry's manipulation of statistics and stories in the Vancouver Sun and the National Post. "Real Estate to Rise Forever" (according to real estate associations).
bluemlein
38 weeks ago
good article, Shannon
What many people don't realize is that many formerly acceptable practices have, over the last few decades, changed for a variety of reasons. the Grope and Flail (thank you always, Richard Needham) is the last bastion of old thought, as in nepotism and protecting one's cronies.
Steve Burgess
38 weeks ago
Tom Hawthorn
Meanwhile the Globe just dropped Tom Hawthorn's column. Fans of it may want to drop the Globe editor a line.
Norman Farrell
38 weeks ago
@ Steve Burgess
It is a loss to intelligent readers if Hawthorn, a unique writer, disappears. No surprise though. While large media companies are healthy, the people who work(ed) for them are not.
Strange isn't it that, while guilty of misconduct and oversight failure respectively, Wente and public editor Sylvia Stead survive while universally respected writers depart.
wanderingraven
38 weeks ago
Discredited commentators
Meanwhile, the story of a much more despicable commentator needs more attention.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/09/25/bernie-m-farber-et-al-hating-the-jew-hating-the-gypsy/
margsview
38 weeks ago
Plagiarism Journalist Style
Sorry, I have sympathy but that doesn't mean we end by simplistically seeing plagiarism as a cry for help. In university whether the paper due was 10 pages or 100, if any student was caught lifting an others work, out they went and the paper rated a failed mark. Frankly, as someone who has to turn to alternative newsletters to finally read articles with sourced facts instead of unqualified opinions, I feel cheated. These times especially demand top notch journalists who do the necessary checks and delivers well thought out information so readers at least have a chance to learn facts and the reasons situations happen the way they do. After all we have enough secretive governments and indifferent banks and corporations as it is, don't you think.
Shannon Rupp
38 weeks ago
Update
Thought you might like the highlights on the continuing story.
CBC Radio Q announced it's dumping Wente as an authority on journalism ethics. One might think they would want to get her on mic just one more time, but who are we to question their wisdom?
http://www.cbc.ca/q/blog/2012/09/25/statement-on-margaret-wente-and-qs-media-panel/
MediaCulpa blogger Carol Wainio responds to Wente's self-defense column with more of the dry and reasoned posts that have won her so many fans.
http://mediaculpapost.blogspot.ca/
Macleans Colby Cosh pens another swell assessment of the Globe's public statements. The reviews aren't flattering, but I gather the show is being held over anyway.
http://www2.macleans.ca/2012/09/25/the-wente-scandal-a-satisfactory-resolution/#comment-662465626
And thanks for the kind words on the piece. Except for you Burgess. But since you're dropping by to alert readers about the Globe cutting one of the few reasons left to read the paper I'll forgive you.
Tom Hawthorn is a terrific writer based in Victoria. If you don't know his work he's worth a Google.
Want to protest this? Email:
Editor-in-Chief John Stackhouse
Public Editor Sylvia Stead
guanolad
38 weeks ago
not just plagiarism
Wente is entitled to her opinions, but so often she makes up the "facts" to fit them.
My favorite Margaret Wente mistake: in an article decrying the “oppression” mentality of black Canadians, she singles out “two prominent black Canadian scholars, Frances Henry and Carol Tator” for their book Discourses of Domination, which “says the white-run media are guilty of systemic racism… The fact that real racism has all but disappeared is not an obstacle for them. Instead, they have identified a version that is all but impossible to detect, unless you are an expert in critical discourse analysis… the real racial stereotyping these days goes the other way around. We are white, therefore we are racist.”
Turns out, of course, that Frances Henry is white. (My friend Nedim Karakayali noticed this and had a letter published in the Globe about it). Who’s the irrational, angry stereotyper, really?
Kreditanstalt
38 weeks ago
More Ado about...
After examining http://mediaculpapost.blogspot.ca/ I can only conclude that Miss Wainio is one of those professional obstructionists who populate the comments sections of many blogs.
You know...the type who take issue with each and every mis-citation, berate any lack of footnoting, constantly bellow or more "facts" and generally nit-pick an otherwise-well-argued opinion piece to death.
This is some kind of obsessive worship of 'empirical evidence', 'expert' opinion or 'verifiable' numbers...so much so they miss the argument altogether. And, number-crunchers aside, most readers are after well-reasoned, well-argued OPINION - not lists of facts.
OTOH, Miss Wainio is a public sector employee, an "Art Professor" locked away in liberal academia. What else can expect...?
Frank
38 weeks ago
And people wonder...
And people wonder why I think Kreditanstalt should be the modern face of Libertariansism.
Anyone know if they're missing a crazy uncle?
Shannon Rupp
38 weeks ago
Late to this party...
... but they're such good dancers!
The Star convinced reluctant interview subject Carol Wainio to talk about her reaction to the kerfuffle she started.
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1262167--blogger-carol-wainio-a-very-serious-professional-person
snert
38 weeks ago
Sad state of affairs.......
when you have to run everything you say through a plagiarism filter. It seems that two people on the planet are not allowed to have the same idea or use the same words to express said idea. Which, if you stop and think about it is a very inefficient way to communicate.
I like how the term "similar to" is used in the Mia Culpa article. It sounds like someone is bucking for a job in the Apple patent department.
It seems to me that there is a bit of a witch hunt going on as some of the comments on the Mia Culpa article indicate that complaints have been directed to the Glob & Mire over a multi-year time frame.
Certainly one should check one's facts but just what is the weight they should carry in an opinion piece? And, when was the last time an opinion piece was requested as a term paper?
They'd better come up with a stock phrase dictionary that you can cut-and-paste from without getting tagged as a plagiarist.
Frank
38 weeks ago
Sad state of affairs.......
when you have to run everything you say through a plagiarism filter. It seems that two people on the planet are not allowed to have the same idea or use the same words to express said idea. Which, if you stop and think about it is a very inefficient way to communicate.
*** I didn't copy and paste snert's posting. Nor do I have any recollection of reading his post at any time.
While downtown earler I talked to a guy named John (an environmental law student at UBC) who agreed that snert's post came after mine.
So there you have it. Now go away haters.
FatherTheo
38 weeks ago
No forgiveness without a guilty plea
I don't believe in unqualified forgiveness for transgressions against the public interest, which plagiarism clearly is. In Aboriginal tradition, forgiveness is predicated upon the transgressor taking public responsibility for their transgression, through action in undoing what they have done, and through apology. Wente clearly has not taken that responsibility. Hence, forgiveness is not warranted. Fire her.
Bil Metcalfe
38 weeks ago
Q
Update: Q has dismissed Wente as a member of its media panel.
Hakuin
38 weeks ago
A liar by definition.
Who cares what she says?
snert
38 weeks ago
Frank
Sounds like the same guy I bumped into. Unfortunately I can't copy and paste the things he told me he'd heard about you. Seems they're unfit to actually print. Rats!
zalm
38 weeks ago
People read Wente???
I thought it just was a placeholder for advertising for a mattress company or home improvement renovations, with snide little asides on what kind of cleaning solutions Stephen Harper prefers when mopping up spilled ragheads, or them damn' backsliding liberal Christianites.
Such is the problem Big Media has when it permits advertorial content to take over the opinion pages as it has at the G&M for some time now.
Trying to catch up to the Scum/Pervence, I suppose. Too late - the Scum has a heckuva lead, what with Patty Graham launching diseased flights of fancy from the executive suite for more than twenty years....
zalm
38 weeks ago
BWAAAAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA
My favourite village idiot notes:
I'm saying that whether someone "makes up" cources and citations or uses "unsubstantiated" (but common knowledge!) facts, we shouldn't get lost in this minutiae."
No, no NO, definitely we shouldn't get lost in minutiae, like tubes of yellowcake being shipped from Niger to Iraq. That, after all was "common knowledge" too.
I think a few million Iraqis would like to have a word with you, kredit. How's your Arabic? As good as your command of logic and facts?
Frank
38 weeks ago
snert
No problem, I actually met three people that say bad things about you too. I will happily name them even, Andy, Andrew and Alex.
Let me know if you need quotes, I can make those up, I mean provide you with them anytime. Geez, I almost pulled a "Wente" there.
Norman Farrell
38 weeks ago
Wente's own defence proves
Wente's own defence proves dishonesty. She said words in her column were drawn from a book except the words were not in the book. They could only have been copied from the Ottawa Citizen column.
Wente never dealt with the real substance of Carol Wainio's accusations. In effect, she answered questions that were not asked. The Globe aided and abetted this misconduct.
dave49
37 weeks ago
What about Press Councils?
I don't know where the various press councils fit into this issue. However, there has been a change in the Canadian MSM with the arrival of Sun TV and one Ezra Levant. Unlike most of the press, his is to my view uncivilized and refuses to behave like a reasonable person. And no, I won't stick out neck and criticize under my own name, as he will just attack me too.
I thought CTRC rules said it was not permissible to state something that the program producers know to be untrue. On that count, from my limited viewing, Levant should have his lips sewn shut.