Is Maureen Dowd’s Career Now Over?
Image by DoubleSpeak with Matthew and Peter Slutsky via Flickr
Here’s a very strange turn in the career of Pulitzer-prize winning Op-Ed Columnist Maureen Dowd. It seems she has been caught plagiarizing from liberal blogger Josh Marshall. Here’s the passage in question, from this Sunday’s edition of The New York Times:
More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.
And here’s Marshall’s original that appeared on his site Talking Points Memo.
More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.
Ouch. Changing “we were” to “the Bush crowd”? If she simply forgot to attribute the quote to Marshall, then why the switch? Stranger still, Dowd claims that she never read Marshall’s original line, that the passage was sent to her from a friend. That begs the question: Your column includes cobbled together passages that friends send you?
The Times has updated the online version of the story, but will this simply blow over? The blogosphere is going to keep chewing on this for some time.
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Oouch indeed! Now she joins the ranks of Joe Biden and Doris Kearns Goodwin, I suspect she’ll survive as they did.
Brian,
Maybe she will survive, but given that this is her stock and trade, and that the subject of the column itself was dishonesty…
I hope she writes a really smug story comparing plagarism to linking and then goes all think-piece-y about a slippery new kind of hypocrisy of a low, dishonest age. And writes it as Michiko Kukatani writing as Stephen Glass. And then quits.
Marc,
Well, the snarky, smug, trademark tone of Dowd’s writing is surely not going to help her right about now. That much is certain.
She’ll do a few mia culpas and that will be the end of it.
Doubt it will even leave much of a dent. More the usual issue of big shot laziness than dishonesty here, or so it seems to me. But her responses to politico and huff post so far have not exactly been examples of clarity. took a couple tries to get the story straight.
Maureen Dowd knows as well as anyone how damaging it can be to a career to be caught plagiarizing. And even if she wanted to do it — even if she thought she could get away with it — do you think she would plagiarize someone on a relatively popular Web site where it would be so easy to catch?
It just doesn’t make sense. That’s why I’m inclined to believe it was an honest mistake.
Unfortunately for Dowd, she has pissed off more than a few people in her day. And now they’ve caught her screwing up — an honest error or not — they’re going to try to bury her.
Should this cost Dowd her career? Of course not. Will it? We’ll see.
Viv,
I doubt it will. Yet, considering the hard time she gave Joe Biden for his brush with plagiarism…
Considering the paragraph was nearly verbatim, her “heard it from a friend” story isn’t fooling anyone.
And I have to take issue with your idea that this is something only right-wing blogs will hammer her on. Liberal blogs despise and mock Dowd way more than the righties. Atrios, Digby, Kos, etc.
Joseph,
Must have been cut-and-pasted from a friend.
You’re right that many on the left also dislike her. But considering the topic of that column…
Plagiarism hasn’t really slowed down others: Doris Kearns Goodwin, Joseph Ellis, Stephen Ambrose. In journalism, falling down is often falling up. Kind of like coaching in the NFL.
But this is the hazard of the cut-and-paste age. I’ve had my own material generously lifted by other writers who clearly grabbed text online and tossed into Word documents and then either forgot what was copied material and what was their own notes, or simply didn’t care to massage my text into their own words. This will only happen more and more.
Mark,
It does seem likely to increase given the way original content is so easily mixed with aggregation. We flit from story to story, grabbing, borrowing, sometimes quoting. What is strange to me in this case is that she used the sentence, but also changed it slightly.
David the question you raise about the “cobbled together passages” from friends is a good one. If that’s how Dowd operates, which is what she said she did, it’s just super lame and unprofessional. She could have credited the poor mystery friend, but I guess that’s not how she rolls… Maybe there’s more to it, or maybe she’s just lame. Will this cause her and others to lift their game? Probably, for a little while, until the next time it happens…
What’s funny about this whole story is how people are salivating over it with a “ha the bitch got caught” mentality. Is there no room left in our world for an “honest mistake” or does every slight require running out to the nearest tree with a sturdy enough limb to support a noose? I don’t like lynch mobs, no matter what the reason, and I see a lynch mob building around this very unimportant issue!
Brian,
I think Dowd is a very smart woman, who often writes very amusing articles. This is a pretty bad mistake, however, from someone who should have known better. Moreover, I think there’s a kind of “live-by-the-sword” lesson here, considering she took Biden to task for plagiarizing. And, yes, there will be plenty of people who want to pile on given the sometimes snarky way Dowd writes.
Hey I never said she isn’t a tad self righteous!
In response to another comment. See in context »B,
Lol!
I don’t think this case is as serious as fabricating an entire story, but its still shameful, especially considering she said she never read the original passage, which obviously she did.
Using find/replace to insert snark? Talk about phoning it in… Though how much journalistic respect do you really need to kibbitz like some Barnard bruncheon debutante slash Miss Havisham?
Oh, I keed the pretty lady…
David,
As you probably remember, from a different site, I really like Maureen Dowd. I didn’t always like what she had to say, but she had a way about her where I was never mad enough to take her off my must-read-list.
I’m shocked a Pulitzer prize winning journalist from The New York Times plagiarized part of her piece. She’s a thief. If she had admitted it and apologized for having forgotten to give blogger Josh Marshall credit and it truly was an accidental oversight, I would give her the benefit of the doubt. But, she changed the words knowingly. It no longer was a quote without proper credit at that point.
I’ve heard lame excuses before, but her lame excuse is beneath her. I can’t believe I feel this way, but The New York Times needs to fire one of their stars. She is a common thief despite the wonderful body of work she has churned-out over the years. Now, everything she has written will be in question.
No-brainer…fire her.
Sandy
Sandy,
Wow, you’re always the voice of reason and calm! Calling for Dowd’s head? I’d say a suspension might suffice. The statement from the Times is pretty lame, too, excusing the whole thing in a very casual way. Oh well…
David,
Thanks for seeing me as the voice of reason and calm. This isn’t an intern at a local paper who could be taught a lesson by suspending her. This is a well-respected journalist at the top of her game working for one of the most respected papers I know.
It is the people at the top of their game that we look at as role models. She knows journalistic ethics. Because of who she is, the bar for her is higher, as it should be. What kind of message will it send to other journalists and The New York Times readers to simply suspend her? A slap on the wrist isn’t going to appease anyone.
She risked her own integrity and The New York Times as well. Perhaps she is a bit of a gambler and it gave her a thrill? My favorite definition for plagiarize (From Merriam-Webster Online.) is “to commit literary theft”. The fact that she claims a friend sent it to her is indicative of someone whom is unable or incapable of taking responsibility for her actions. Even if a friend did send it to her, she is responsible for her piece and every single word in it. This is an intelligent woman that is more than capable of writing her own column. Why is anybody helping her with her column other than perhaps an editor? If you think about it, it really is two black eyes for Maureen Dowd.
Sandy
In response to another comment. See in context »I think Maureen Dowd now has what I once heard referred to as a “comma problem.” As in, “Maureen Dowd [comma] who was the center of a plagiarism scandal.” It doesn’t end her career, but it certainly diminishes it.
Also, I agree with everyone who has pointed out that the cover up makes the crime exponentially worse. If she’d just come clean from the get go and said that she’d meant to attribute it, or that her notes got mixed up and she didn’t realize her error, or whatever then this whole thing wouldn’t be as bad. It’s one thing to mess up – everyone makes mistakes – it’s another to lie about it when you get caught.
In my opinion, she should lose her job. Remember during how Dowd ridiculed Hillary Clinton for saying she landed in Bosnia under sniper fire? Dowd helped to cost Clinton the nomination of the Democratic party. Now the shoe is on the other foot.
Were people really turning to Maureen Dowd for creatively, carefully thought-out opinions? A hack is a hack. Nothing new to see here.
Geez, all these comments make me think there are too many readers who think the Times is infallible and that their reporters aren’t humans who might, in the course of a long, shining career, screw up. This plagiarism looks like the work of a lazy tired day, a cut and paste mix up. Of course she reads other journalists’ work, of course she sees what others are saying to form her own ideas. Taking them as her own is arrogance more than plagiarism; looking back over her notes and seeing something she thought was smart she probably just assumed she had thought it up herself. Is she arrogant? Yes. Sloppier than we might have assumed? Yes. Is this career ending? No way.