Wow. Jane Hamsher’s comments on that awful “The New Republic publishes a hit piece on Chris Hedges” post are so flippant and irresponsible they need a post of their own. Ethics, people! Journalistic ethics! This isn’t rocket surgery (to plagiarize a phrase I saw a few days ago and don’t remember the source of). Writers and journalists should tell the truth, and they shouldn’t put their names on other people’s work except in the standard way with proper attribution.
Hamsher comments on a suggestion of litigation.
Hedges is a public figure, and they’re pretty careful about what they say so I doubt a suit would get very far. But it’s a piece that they should be ashamed to have published. At 5,700 words it’s like the War and Peace of online journalism.
Do you see the full stupidity of that? First she admits the article probably tells the truth, then she says TNR should be ashamed of publishing it because it’s so long! Godalmighty.
For the record, TNR does sometimes publish long pieces. That just is something it does. Paul Berman has had very long articles published there, like the one on Tariq Ramadan.
Then someone else complains about the length, and Hamsher responds again.
It just kept going on. And on. And on. I finally just put it in a word counter. It’s clearly an attempt at “where there’s smoke there’s fire” insinuation, but I can’t imagine anyone who didn’t hate Hedges righteously would have the patience to read through.
Not clearly at all, because it’s not smoke. Also there’s that bit about doubting a lawsuit would get very far? Because it’s probably true?
And yet more of the “it was too looooooong and too hard to reeeeeeead” commentary from the person announcing it was a hit piece. (Maybe this explains her sympathy for Hedges; she’s a lazy reader so she has sympathy for his laziness as a writer.)
I confess to giving up about 2/3 of the way through when it was apparent it was never going to end, so if anyone takes the trouble to read through that and finds some actual proof, let us know. Then we can all sit and scratch our heads at why they buried their lede 4000 words down.
It would be kind of funny if Ketcham decided to sue Hamsher for accusing him of lying when she doesn’t even believe he did lie.
Ah, yes. Shall we term this ‘the TLDR defense’?
Come to think of it, I’ve actually seen this in the wilds of the web. Someone does a thorough 3,000 word fisking of a troll, the troll responds with a dauntingly erudite “LOLOLOLOL! TLDR!!!”…
Good company to be in, that.
… there’s a certain cynicism in it, I shouldn’t wonder. Maybe they’re hoping people really are that lazy. And with the power of suggestion, they’ll convince them: seriously, people, don’t bother. It’s like thousands of words. No way is anyone gonna tweet this… I mean, it might take you several whole minutes to read it, y’hear me? Now go look at some cat pictures, kthxbye.
@Ophelia:
this:
isn’t an admission that TNR was careful to publish truth. It’s a comment on defamation law in the US post-NYT v Sullivan where public figures cannot recover damages even for false assertions of fact that damage the public figure except where actual malice is shown.
So, there’s an important premise in error in this post, but I don’t disagree that “it’s too long” is not a rebuttal.
Also, “there was no proof”? Why not take the facts **alleged** to be proof, and show how they don’t amount to plagiarism? That would be an actual rebuttal. ignoring what was put forward as evidence is not a rebuttal. It’s childish denial.
Oh, ok. Although, then again, can we be sure that’s what she meant? But I take your point that it makes more sense and is thus a more charitable reading.
This is always so baffling to me. “You’re wrong because I wasn’t paying attention to what you said.”
well, now in the comments, if you are of the opinion that plagiarism occurred, you are attacking an ally, and also apparently a part of COINTELPRO…ah, well, so much for being a fan of ethics.
So I just read the piece. It’s pretty damning of Hedges, chronicling many instances of probable plagiarism and Hedge’s extremely unprofessional way of handling them.
How could someone read this and think “yawn, tldr, let me know when you have a point.” The point is made at the beginning, and is repeated constantly all the way to the end. Even just skimming the article, I could easily see the blockquote sections comparing Hedge’s work to someone else’s, which is the proof the Hamsher so desperately wants. There’s no wasted space either; the narrative about how Hedges deals with the accusations is just as damning as the accusations themselves.
I can’t understand Hamsher’s comment. She said she read it, but if she did then she’d know how obvious the point is presented, especially if she read through 2/3 of it.
Wow. And now I’ve read through a couple comments. The original piece about Hedges’s plagiarism doesn’t mention political alignments at all, yet the comments are all about how its obviously a character assassination piece constructed by liberals because of Hedges’s politics. O_O
Somehow it seems to be a pattern that the response to an evidence based claim is an attack on liberals…
Aaand now I’m at the point where the comments are all “Well, ok, technically he did plagiarize a little, but so what? We all do it! This plagiarism was ok because reasons!”
I have no idea who Chris Hedges is, all I know is that this seems to be a case of a hero being accused of bad behavior and all of his worshipers being desperate to try to deny or excuse it.
The Urban Dictionary gives a cite of “rocket surgery” from 2004.
… this seems to be a case of a hero being accused of bad behavior and all of his worshipers being desperate to try to deny or excuse it.
Gosh, why does that sound so strangely familiar?
This reminds me of back when the assholes assailed you, Ophelia, over the word counts of your blog posts. Your quotes were too long! Your posts were too brief!
The content must be rock-solid if all they can claw at is the format.
I must have read a different article than Hamsher read. I thought Ketcham did a more than adequate job showing how Hedges plagiarized several people over the years with direct, lengthy quotes from the original source and from Hedges.
I’m not anti-Hedges because he’s a liberal or a theist. I’m anti-Hedges because he’s a hack who stole other peoples’ words.
I just don’t get this. 5700 words is a bit longish for an article (nowadays), but it’s not horrendous! The Nation regularly runs articles longer than that. And the length of the piece should not be relevant. The author should take whatever words it takes to develop the case, no more no less. This is just so peculiar to me…but then, I guess we’ve all learned to read differently in an internet world. I’ll admit to not reading blogs that write too long on their articles, but to me too long means they could have developed their case in shorter form, not they had more than a set number of words.
Emperor Joseph II: My dear young man, don’t take it too hard. Your work is ingenious. It’s quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that’s all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect.
Mozart: Which few did you have in mind, Majesty?
“I gave up 1/3 of the way from the end… that was never coming.”
I hope his was supposed to be irony, but it’s shit writing either way.
I despair that journalistic standards are so low that queues of professional writers are forming to dismiss this as not plagiarism.
I had no idea that casually mentioning a source before appropriating large chunks without clear attribution, lifting wholesale structure and ideas, and presenting secondhand quotes as though one witnessed them firsthand was common industry practice. And apparently, not to be considered plagiarism.
Is journalism so utterly broken?
@Bernard Bumner
The sad part? Jane Hamsher sells herself and her site as an alternative to broken journalism. Oh well.
Here’s my least favorite comment:
“Nobody writes as well as Hedges. If “somebody’s wife” had written anything close enough to his caliber of work to support charges of plagiarism, I’m sure I would have heard of this outstanding female writer before now.”
Anyone who’s not famous can’t accuse anyone who is of anything. Way to stand up for the downtrodden, you liberal you!
Aside from the hyperbolic overestimation of Hedge’s writing, it misses the point that a great deal of what he swiped was quotes and other interview material, gathered no doubt by a large amounts of hard work. That’s exactly the kind of journalism that lazy celebrity jerks love to steal, because they are, you know, lazy.
Nobody writes as well as some middlebrow nobody writer that most people have ever heard of?
Chris Hedges was barely on my radar, it wasn’t until I saw his picture that I had a vague remembrance of seeing him on the teevee machine once or twice. I clicked the linky through PZ’s blog because I am an editor and plagiarism is a big deal in my world.
I’ve spent the last two days commenting and defending Ketcham’s analysis. “OMG so he didn’t block quote correctly, that’s all this is!” or “So he forgot a footnote, so what?!” in particular. As I’ve said multiple times, you can add others’ work to yours all you want, but the footnotes, cites, endnotes, and “as Hemingway said…” all need to be there in the text BEFORE the text is submitted to the editor. When you block quote, well, that’s it, a quote. You don’t get to gently massage the text changing word order or a “that” for “which,” you get to [sic] to show authorial intent.
Otherwise you’re trying to pass someone else’s work off as your own. It’s really not the ed’s job to cite an author’s sources. I’m a copy editor, I’m your last line of defense before print/publish, AFTER fact checkers et. al. These are egregious examples of plagiarism and backtracking/trying to derail the fact checkers.
@14 “Your notes tire the royal ear.”
@16 If you delve into the comments, you find that actual editors are calling this actual plagiarism and the FDL regulars are yoinking out the legal definition of same and parsing it to the letter to fit their definition of same.
Attribution. It’s not optional.