Relevant Links




Your Ad Here

Toronto Star plagiarism

A hat tip to an avid reader of newspapers who pointed me to this story.

From the Toronto Star on December 31, 2005, printed in its entirety:

Moon God Drinking Products Co., a skin care company in China, has offered a bounty of 1,000 yuan ($144) for every typographical or literary error found in a day's editions of four Chinese publications in an attempt to embarrass journalists into better writing.

Hao Mingjian, who came up with the idea for the bounty, said that "China's press has lost its polish in the past decade or two," which "reflects a chaotic cultural environment and shows people lack a sense of responsibility."

We applaud Hao's initiative, but we have learned over our years at the Star that it is impossible to embarrass journalists. Public humiliation is our stock in trade.

If the face cream mogul truly wants to improve the quality of the Chinese papers, he should try a carrot, not a stick.

Our colleagues are never so dedicated to their craft as when there's free food on offer.

And if Hao were to promise generous beer rations for a job well done, the papers would be error-free within the month.

And we're almost certain that our counterparts at the Globe, the Sun and the Post would agree to a similar proposal here.

Cute, eh? Quite the rib-tickler from the Star.

So would the editors at the Globe, the Sun and the Post join in this proposal?

I will hazard a guess and say they would decline. Why? Because I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the editors at these other papers are firmly opposed to plagiarism.

Plagiarism?

From July 9, 1995:

Moon God Drinking Products Co., a skin care company in China, has offered a bounty of 1,000 yuan (US$120) for every typographical or literary error found in a day's editions of four Chinese publications in an attempt to embarrass journalists into better writing. Hao Mingjian, who came up with the idea for the bounty, said that "China's press has lost its polish in the past decade or two," which "reflects a chaotic cultural environment and shows people lack a sense of responsibility." (Reuters) ...Nice try, but journalists can't be embarrassed.

See this piece at Regret the Error.

Bottom line is that this piece, first written and published a decade ago, was recently republished on-line, with date and attribution, by Randy Cassingham at the website This is True. He reprinted it on December 5 because he liked it, and because he was too ill at the time to put together a new issue, so he went with a "Best of..."

Then 26 days later, the same piece, with no credit to Reuters nor any indication of where it came from, shows up in the Toronto Star, the same first paragraph, word for word, but helpfully updated with the corrected 2005 exchange rate for the Canadian dollar.

And the Star also stole Cassingham's tag line! He added the comment "Nice try, but journalists can’t be embarrassed", his column being a commentary on the news. The Toronto Star points out that "it is impossible to embarrass journalists".

Not only did the Star steal the article, the Star stole Cassingham's opinion as well:

"Note they even stole my tagline for the story -- my comment on the story that's my stock in trade as a news commentary columnist -- and published it as their own," he told us via email. "That's the very definition of plagiarism, isn't it?"

Yes, I think that is the definition of plagiarism.

So the editorial board at the Toronto Star believes that public humiliation is not likely to improve the quality of writing of their reporters. Let me suggest that a public examination of this episode of editorial theft will give the reporters pause, especially if there is a price exacted from the editorial board for this.

Your Ad Here
Relevant Links




Your Ad Here

Create Commons License 2.5
Angry in the Great White North by Steve Janke is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License. Based on a work at stevejanke.com.
Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict
[Valid Atom 1.0]
Valid CSS!