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Monday, May 18, 2009

Liberal Columnist, Maureen Dowd Gets Direct Talking Points From Liberal Blogger

Maureen Dowd, popular liberal columnist for the New York Times has been caught red handed, plagiarizing a paragraph in one of her columns from a liberal blog.

Dowd wrote, in her Sunday column:

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.

On the Thursday before her column came out, Josh Marshall wrote:

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.


Not bad enough that Dowd lifted the paragraph with a minor change, she then goes on to claim she didn't read the TPM blog last week, but a friend "told her" about the "line".

Dowd claims that she never read his blog last week but was told the line by a friend of hers. In a follow-up email, she forwarded her desire to apologize to Marshall, writing that had she known, she would have gladly credited Marshall.

Dowd notes that the Times is fixing her column online to give proper credit to Marshall and that a correction will run tomorrow;

josh is right. I didn't read his blog last week, and didn't have any idea he had made that point until you informed me just now.


i was talking to a friend of mine Friday about what I was writing who suggested I make this point, expressing it in a cogent -- and I assumed spontaneous -- way and I wanted to weave the idea into my column.

but, clearly, my friend must have read josh marshall without mentioning that to me.
we're fixing it on the web, to give josh credit, and will include a note, as well as a formal correction tomorrow.



Marshall has now been credited on the original article with a correction saying "An earlier version of this column failed to attribute a paragraph about the timeline for prisoner abuse to Josh Marshall's blog at Talking Points Memo."

Plagiarism aside, this brings up the nature of what major media has become and the liberal nature of the majority of the writers and reporters that work for places like the New York Times and many others.

Remember the older news that journalists, by a margin greater than 10-to-1, donate to Democrats during election cycles?

An analysis of federal records shows that the amount of money journalists contributed so far this election cycle favors Democrats by a 15:1 ratio over Republicans, with $225,563 going to Democrats, only $16,298 to Republicans .

Two-hundred thirty-five journalists donated to Democrats, just 20 gave to Republicans — a margin greater than 10-to-1. An even greater disparity, 20-to-1, exists between the number of journalists who donated to Barack Obama and John McCain.

Searches for other newsroom categories (reporters, correspondents, news editors, anchors, newspaper editors and publishers) produces 311 donors to Democrats to 30 donors to Republicans, a ratio of just over 10-to-1. In terms of money, $279,266 went to Dems, $20,709 to Republicans, a 14-to-1 ratio.


Is it any surprise then that liberal journalists are actually getting their talking points from liberal bloggers?

Is it any wonder liberal papers, such as the New York Times, are losing money, losing advertising revenue and becoming endangered of being made extinct?

You can catch the buzz around the blogosphere on this over at Memeorandum.

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