plagiarism

[piranha]

supergee linked to a list of plagiarisms, and one item in there got me thinking:

Janet Bagnall said she had mistaken Nicholas Kristof’s writing for her own while compiling her research for a column. She then included it in her column verbatim. A New York Times reporter would offer this exact same excuse just a few months later.

she should really keep the attribution with the text if this happens to her.

but beyond that, i actually think this is possible, though i am mostly coming at it from the other side -- i often do not recognise my own writing if sufficient time has passed, and have been surprised by people quoting me (with attribution) in their sigs. wow, did i really say that? huh. i recognise the gist, but not the precise wording. this is in general true for me -- i do not have a verbatim memory for what was said, but i remember the essence of it. i am not one of those people who you'll find quoting movie lines at yourself, and if i don't write down interesting quotes, i'll forget them immediately.

i also just remembered that plagiarism happens to me with small snippets -- just yesterday, some hours passed between me reading comments in kathy's LJ, and writing my own response, and upon rereading the thread today i noticed i used the same phrasing to describe certain types of activists as somebody else had used. at the time i was writing it, it seemed entirely "my" phrase, and it's perfectly conceivable that i would have used it at another time, but in that context it's obvious to me that it snuck into my subconscious from the comment using it first; it was a perfect match to how i see those activists, and it therefore clicked into place without me even noticing.

that means it's probably possible for a newspaper journalist to mistake somebody else's writing for one's own if one has had very similar thoughts.

Comments

[king-tirian.livejournal.com]

It is chilling to me that we seem to be much more comfortable forgiving Martha Stewart than Doris Kearns Goodwin for what seem to me to be comprable lapses of judgement.

Still, in an age when we are on a witchhunt for plagirizers, it seems like journalists would adopt some sort of discipline to minimize their risk. If you're quoting someone in your notes in longhand, then use a different pen or something.