Michelle Malkin, plagiarist
A few days ago, I looked at how Malkin's "Muslim-only banks" lie was picked-up by some right-wing blogs. After picking up on her recent misrepresentation of Hillary Clinton, I decided to look at how right-wing blogs had parroted her, ignoring Hillary's actual argument.
Reading military blogger Dadmanly, I discovered a mitigating detail: ABC News had already written a subtly misleading story. Like Malkin's column, it selectively quoted Hillary Clinton's letter to John Warner and others to give a false impression of the content of her letter.
Fine, so it wouldn't be fair to pick on readers of Malkin for having the wrong idea when a major news outlet got it wrong too.
However, it's interesting to look at why readers of ABC News would have the same false impression as readers of Malkin. First, ABC News:
"We perhaps could have avoided so many of these fatalities with the right body armor," said Clinton, who recently wrote letters to Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Armed Services Committee; Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee; and Francis J. Harvey, secretary of the Army, calling for an investigation into why troops were not being protected.
And Malkin's column:
"We perhaps could have avoided so many of these fatalities with the right body armor," concluded Brigadier General Clinton, who immediately dashed off letters to Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Armed Services Committee; Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee; and Francis J. Harvey, secretary of the Army. Smarter-than-thou Clinton is, of course, demanding an investigation (highly recommended by image consultants to boost one's pro-military posturing).
She just changed "said Clinton" to "concluded Brigadier General Clinton", "who recently wrote" to "who immediately dashed off" and "calling for an investigation" to "demanding an investigation", adding the snark about "smarter-than-thout" and "highly recommended by image consultants".
So, this is how Michelle Malkin writes her columns: she lifts paragraphs from the news, changes the verbs and adds snark.
If I could have an answer to one question from Michelle, it'd be whether she actually read Hillary Clinton's letter, or she wrote her column on the basis of that ABC News story.
Reading military blogger Dadmanly, I discovered a mitigating detail: ABC News had already written a subtly misleading story. Like Malkin's column, it selectively quoted Hillary Clinton's letter to John Warner and others to give a false impression of the content of her letter.
Fine, so it wouldn't be fair to pick on readers of Malkin for having the wrong idea when a major news outlet got it wrong too.
However, it's interesting to look at why readers of ABC News would have the same false impression as readers of Malkin. First, ABC News:
"We perhaps could have avoided so many of these fatalities with the right body armor," said Clinton, who recently wrote letters to Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Armed Services Committee; Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee; and Francis J. Harvey, secretary of the Army, calling for an investigation into why troops were not being protected.
And Malkin's column:
"We perhaps could have avoided so many of these fatalities with the right body armor," concluded Brigadier General Clinton, who immediately dashed off letters to Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Armed Services Committee; Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee; and Francis J. Harvey, secretary of the Army. Smarter-than-thou Clinton is, of course, demanding an investigation (highly recommended by image consultants to boost one's pro-military posturing).
She just changed "said Clinton" to "concluded Brigadier General Clinton", "who recently wrote" to "who immediately dashed off" and "calling for an investigation" to "demanding an investigation", adding the snark about "smarter-than-thout" and "highly recommended by image consultants".
So, this is how Michelle Malkin writes her columns: she lifts paragraphs from the news, changes the verbs and adds snark.
If I could have an answer to one question from Michelle, it'd be whether she actually read Hillary Clinton's letter, or she wrote her column on the basis of that ABC News story.
posted by John Lombard at 8:23 PM
41 Comments:
For someone who is always railing against "the MSM", she sure gobbles that shit up and spews it out without a flinch.
Holy geez - now that's a great catch.
Now I know how a scooped scientist feels. :-D
Now, now, do not be so quick to blame Michelle. Maybe she did not plagiarize the news story. It might have been her husband Jesse Malkin that did the deed, since many people speculate that he ghostwrites her blog.
In any regard, today we spell plagiarist M-A-L-K-I-N.
You stay classy, right-wingnuttia.
may they all just go where the sun never shines...steadfast liars that they are
Good job, dude. And good job Atrios for linking these diamonds in the rough.
Congrats on making Atrios!
Might be worthwhile to take a look at some of her old columns and then do some Googling. Methinks we'll discover that there's quite a bit more (plagarism) where this came from.
I hate to find myself the defender of Ms. Malkin, but isn't rewording an article and adding snark pretty much what a blog is?
In regards to "isn't [it] pretty much what a blog is"... yes and no.
Yes, a lot of what a lot of blogs do is reference sources and quotes that they find interesting (and comment on them). But, no, they (almost always, at least when I've seen) always credit it, and usually link to where they found it More of a "isn't this (points) interesting".
This, however, is definitely plagarism, and as a reader/writer of amateur/internet-published fiction and a current academic, I consider it one of the worst of 'academic' crimes -- and I'm not the only one. Pulling this sort of stunt in a writing assignment these days would get Ms. Malkin expelled from almost any college.
Come to think of it... wouldn't ABC have a bit of a lawsuit case over plagarism? I've not looked up the legal complications from theft-of-IP (genuine theft, not copyright violation -- you're claiming the work of another as your own), but...
erk - forgot to sign. The above is mine.
Sunhawk
That mey be what a "blog" is, but I thought that MM is a "real journalist".
Now you've done it.
Ooooo, you're going to love your stay at Camp Malkin Manzanar, you America-hater....
Are you sure the plagiarism you allege was on Malkin's side? There are a number of people in senior journalism positions who are just smart enough to excise adjectives while copying.
I'm sure the time stamps would tell who was reading over whose shoulder.
I recommend that you hold that post of hers close, and should she ever land a syndicated column in a periodical not funded by Richard Mellon Sciafe, you can forward this column to them. Odds are, they won't appreciate having a plaigiarist on staff.
It was based on how she could twist the story she just read. The right wingers do know research and their entire thought process is an orwellian one, focusing solely on how to generate content to feed the propaganda machine. They cannot be engaged in debate, they are just outright shills. Its time to stop giving the obvious propagandists like Malkin and Rush and Coulter truck as journalists.
"adds snark."
That's too kind. I would refer to what she does as "makes shit up."
This was funny, but I have to wonder why anyone outside the Pajama Media circle jerk cares what she spews.
With apologies to Oakland, there is no there, there.
Pointing out her lies, fabrications and distortions are necessary because the traditional media are hopeless now.
Correcting her is like vacuuming the rug. A tedious chore to be avoided until the Roomba is perfected.
We need a Malkin-bot.
Copy & Paste can be an ugly thing.
If a news story says, "It was 70 degrees today," and I write, "Today, it was 70 degrees," only a moron would say that was plagiarism. 1) It's not like there are many other ways to point out what the temperature was; 2) It's not like the phrase "it was 70 degrees today" shows any special creativity; it merely points out a fact in the most basic way possible (it would be different if someone copied a sentence like, "On this, the 70th day after the ides of March, it was 70 degrees, an irony that should not escape the quick-witted," or something with more than just a simple recitation of facts); 3) Op-eds would be ridiculously long if columnists had to provide a citation for every simple recitation of fact.
Bottom line: If Clinton wrote a letter to three people, how the hell are you supposed to mention that fact in anything that is very different from the original language?
Re: "Bottom line: If Clinton wrote a letter to three people, how the hell are you supposed to mention that fact in anything that is very different from the original language?"
Uh, you link to the ABC News (or AP or Take-your-pick) story, or cut/paste (with attribution) and then you add your own spin/snark.
And your "70 degrees" thing is sort of silly and obfuscatory.
Interesting that the topic that Malkin et al. are NOT screaming about is that according to the Pentagon's own reports, soldiers died because Rummy and Gang were too incompetent and uninterested to provide decent equipment.
I quote others all the time but I do so by clearing indicating that it is their quote. After all, blog software makes attribution incredibly easy. Maybe Michelle is simply technically deficient at blogging.
oy, look, I bow to no one in agreeing that Malkin is a moron, pure and simple, but to call what you showed "plagiarism" is ludicrous. She quoted the sound bite from Hillary's letter and then listed the recipients. If you say the excerpts are misleading, link to the letter and discuss THAT, but this just gives her and her comrades reason to laugh at our pettiness.
Great eye!
I found some more.
Michelle Malkin ripped off the Associated Press for that same article: Michelle Malkin writes like Jeff Gannon.
Yeah, well last time I checked, Herr Malkin was trying to pose as some kind of “center-right blogger” [sic] by joining the bandwagon of a Karl Rove-sponsored “appeal” – see link below:
http://www.proteinwisdom.com/index.php/weblog/entry/19672/
Frankly, half the signatories are squarely “to the right of Attila the Hun” to use John Carpenter’s famous description of Kurt Russell and Lee Van Cliff!
To qualify them as “center-right” activists is kind of like Jorg Haider’s pathetic pretense of being a “liberal democrat”, or comrade Fidel Castro’s self-description as “center-left socialist”…
Dr Victor de la Vega
Thomas More Center for Middle-East Studies
http://www.mideastmemo.blogspot.com/
The letters can be found on Hillary Clinton's website No mention of "We perhaps could have avoided..." so Malkin obviously lifted her post from ABC.
Perfect. Great catch.
She reminds me of a Pilipino crony of the Marcos days.
How come Clinton-basher Malkin never criticizes Bill O'Reilly's adulterous sex tourism with hot Italians and Thai hookers?? Does Malkin put out to get on his show??
Since a right-wing, psuedo-intellectual ho like MM does what she does, not to contribute to human progress or to advance our understanding of critical issues, but to revel in the attention she receives from similarly dysfunctional, frightened, and hate-filled liars, cheats, egotists, and the power mad, is catching her in a marginally meaningless bit of plagarism really all that significant? It's like complaining, let's say, that a subway slasher is using rusty razor blades.
Someone like Malkin -- or the queen-demon psuedo-intellectual, psuedo-political ho of them all, A. Coulter -- should simply be ignored. Any other response validates their twisted existence.
Wouldn't be the first time. I still remembered how she stole the story pretty much word for word on that false tale about terrorists targetting a US base with rpgs and anti air missiles before getting away. I swear she either steals every story or just makes it up to proof how evil anyone who doesn't follow her views are. She certainly isn't a journalist thats for sure.
Intriguing discussions, all of them. Wondering now how much of MM's writings in support of the U.S. "relocation" camps during WWII may have been pliagarized. It certainly didn't take long to "research" her book regarding the subject (less than one year, according to some), yet I've not seen accounts of whether pliagarism was an issue.
Anybody who doesn't think this is plagiarism, read this again:
"letters to Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Armed Services Committee; Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee; and Francis J. Harvey, secretary of the Army."
There are a million ways to write that. You could say "Chairman of the Armed Services Committee John Warner," you could say simply "John Warner" (why bother identifying people's positions in a blog focusing on politics? Don't we know who they are by now?). At the end why not just write "the Secretary of the Army" since its not vital to her point?
This is clearly plagiarism, done with the cunning of a high school freshman copy/pasting out of an online encyclopedia and changing a word here and there.
What do you expect from someone with a remedial command of the language, absolutely no commitment to tact or professionalism and all the intelligence God gave a fruit fly? Malkin's a hack.
Okay.. you know what, if Malkin had written the following, she wouldn't have had this problem...
She needs a copy editor to do rewrites for her if she's writing her own blog.
Here goes.
Today, Hilary Clinton, the wannabe presidential nominee 2008, who has a a snowballs chance in hell, if I might add, was burning up the fax machines and stuffing the mailboxes of Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Armed Services Committee; Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee; and Francis J. Harvey, secretary of the Army., all of whom should have more discerning concern when it comes to selecting the equipment to furnish our military with our citizens tax dollars.
In a move that is highly speculated as political posturing, Mrs. Clinton failed to acknowledge any failures by herself or her distinguished collogues, to provide adequate oversight when it comes to voting on financing appropriations matters.
ah, poor Michelle - when there's only so much media time to devote to hate hags, and with folks like Coulter always hogging the limelight, Michelle really doesn't have a chance - even when she steals her stuff.
http://www.hairytruth.blogspot.com
I am sick and tired of the red herrings. The basic facts are
1. 1 billion dollars pays for 333,000 sets of Body Armor at $3,000 per person.... Take that and smoke it. We are spending 4 billion dollars per year for defense...
2. How can they say they are supporting the troups when they reimburse 1,100 for each set? If you fall into the right category, otherwise you get nothing...
3. 1 in 13 of the soldiers are foreign in the services and how can they pay for body armor if they are sending their pay home?
I'm a reporter for a major global news organization, and think maybe you people need a little Journalism 101. Plagiarism is when one author lifts another author's ORIGINAL work. What you've pointed out is a quote -- something that was *said* by a third party and in the public domain. If someone lifted a quote that was given exclusively to a reporter, then that writer would have to source the quote. That's not the case here. And good luck trying to sell a plagiarism claim on just one word. Similar, yes, plagiarism no.
It appears that this is all she has to add to the conversation.
So who's up for looking for the original source for that internment camp book she "wrote?"
To the person who mentioned the problems of giving sources for factual references - well, isn't that what the internet is for? You can make those pages as long as you like, and so stick in a few references. In fact, my favourite columnist, George Monbiot (it may interest you to know that it appears that he is the source of the epithet "moonbat", a corruption of his name used by right-wingers in the UK which seems to have leaked into the right-wing in America, despite him having very little name recognition there), does exactly that, so people can check his sources.
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/002101.htm
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/002101.htm
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/002101.htm
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/002101.htm
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/002101.htm
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/002101.htm
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/002101.htm
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