Ann-cest Redux
The silence is deafening on Drudge’s coverage of the plagiarism accusation against Ann Coulter.
Don’t misread me. I question both the convenient timing of the accusation only a month after Godless skyrocketed the bestseller charts, as well as the merit of the claim itself. I understand why Matt Drudge would not ingratiate the New York Post with a response to a story he does not believe. I understand why, even if he felt the accusation was newsworthy for its own sake, why he would not do anything that could be construed as disloyal to his friend.
On the other hand, maybe there’s a bit of inconsistency in this North Korean-style “news blackout”. A search on Drudge Report Archives turns up a story on Coulter whenever someone has thrown a pie, disrupted her speech, or used a too-clever photo lense on her Time cover shot. In some ways, this new allegation is another pie throw. A pie throw that may or may not turn out to be a legitimate shot. It is, at best (for her) a slanderous accusation with yet-to-be-seen consequences for the offending medium. At worst, it is true.
The word of America’s #1 bestseller vs. the word of one of the best known papers in the country. Either way, this story is newsworthy. Especially in the light of recent author scandals ignited by the right research with the right anti-plagiarism software at the right time. Undoubtedly, Ann’s attorney wants her to say as little as possible no matter how innocent she is. But it isn’t Matt Drudge’s responsibility to listen to someone else’s legal or PR counsel. Drudge has a job to do. He has his own credibility to protect.
The Drudge Report has never been skimping relevant news coverage, no matter what its detractors claim. Often a breaking story is not so much about the primary issue as it is about the media’s decision process in addressing it. Drudge didn’t break the Monica Lewinsky story per se — he broke the story that Newsweek decided at the 11th hour not to cover it. Reporting the hot story of the day is what Matt Drudge does. While some consider many of his original reports slanderous (I won’t go there with the Blumenthal case right now), in essence, what he does is circulate other people’s reports, other people’s allegations, other people’s claims. He circulates stories that have made international rounds that he himself doesn’t necessarily care about — take the Paris Hilton sidekick hacking, or Jennifer somebody divorcing Brad somebody. While Matt’s about-face on “the Post vs. Ann Coulter” is a testament to his integrity as a loyal friend, or even to his values, it strays from the journalistic integrity within the style of reporting on which he has built his legacy.
The truth of the matter is that I don’t consider Ann Coulter worthy of the amount of attention she receives — I have little patience for intellectual laziness on either side of the political continuum. Only with great reluctance have I mentioned her three times in this space in the course of a month. But intellectual laziness doesn’t equal stupidity, and were she ever tempted to lift other people’s texts without crediting sources, she wouldn’t pick this time of her career to do so. (Then again, I thought the intense media scrutiny would have kept Bill Clinton monogamous in the White House.)
Ann Coulter deserves a fair trial in the media. But even a fair trial needs a statement from the defense team. Doubly so the kangaroo court of cyberspace. Ironically, Ann’s own site addresses the issue more directly than Drudge. Acknowledging the existence of this week’s latest controversy does not impugn Ann Coulter’s integrity. It behooves him to cover that controversy, to preserve his own.
Developing?
by RegoPark - 4:23 pm
Drudge should cover it, and maybe he’ll talk about the New Yori Post during his radio show tomorrow night. Crown, Coulter’s publisher of the book as opposed to her column syndicator, firmly stood by her. Her syndicator is the one that will investigate whether this guy’s findings with his software that there are plagiarized passages are true. (Why her column syndicator would be more interested than Crown is its own question). And of course, finding via computer software a few words strung together the same way does not necessarily immediately scream plagiarism, or that the quotes were not attributed in her text. And she does do a lot of rehashing of widely covered news stories, which are written virtually the same way by the vast majority of reporters and they are not accused of plagiarism.
Finally, the New York Post also was the source of a news item not long ago that Julia Roberts was signed with Avon for a $2-$4 million contract as its new spokeswoman. The media picked this up and carried it verbatim nearly everywhere (plagiarism anyone)? But aside from that, the story, according to Avon, had anyone bothered to contact Avon or even Roberts’s media people, is false. It’s not true. She wasn’t signed. No one in the media anywhere ever bothered to contact Avon or Roberts about this New York Post story but just ran it. Never happened.
Publishing houses generally stand by their authors up to a point. Generally they address and ferret out any potential legal issues during the editing process, though we can see from the Frey and Viswanathan scandals that nasty surprises do happen.
My personal concerns about anti-plagiarism software is the same as yours, plus the fact that what academics classify as plagiarism is not necessarily intentional intellectual property theft, but sloppy documentation. We need to give AC the benefit of the doubt, but, again, the issue calls for discussion.
I try to restrict topics on this space to those relevant to Drudge and new media, so I purposely didn’t delve too deeply into the Ann Coulter issue. (I’m sure plenty of web spaces are taking care of that for me…)
Today the syndicator of her columns rejected plagiarism after looking into it, and Drudge has that item (it’s not being widely reported anywhere else that trumpeted the allegations). I’m thinking that those mainstream outlets that didn’t trumpet the allegations had the same concerns we’ve both cited, one of them being that news stories read virtually identical to one another as it is and heaven forbid the implications of a news outlet giving Coulter a hard time for what is rampant in the industry. Also, the guy who came up with this software admitted that three or four paragraphs later Coulter would give four or five sources for her material, but complained it was unclear what was referring to which passage (and this on top of her pages of sources at the end of the book).
One thing Drudge does well is following up with an “accusation” story after the mainstream press have abandoned it. We often read of someone being sued or accused of something, but the nature of the news media is that the story is no longer “current” when the defendant’s innocence is established. He himself is a victim of this…he is remembered as the guy who was sued by Sidney Blumenthal for incorrectly reporting that he beat his wife, but couldn’t get much of anyone to report on it when the lawsuit was dropped. (As a PR person, I can tell you he doesn’t do his own very well, but that’s a separate issue…)
I’m not surprised at all by the outcome of this, but I still think it behooved Drudge to cover the accusation…in one of his own newsflashes if he didn’t want to link to anyone else’s story…