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By Lorne, on April 27, 2013, at 8:33 am
Regular readers of this blog may be aware of my almost boundless enthusiasm for The Toronto Star. I deeply admire its progressive mission, and I find its roster of excellent columnists informative and thought-provoking. I have come to regard it as a trusted source of news and opinion.
It was therefore a bit of a shock to realize how badly below acceptable journalistic standards it recently fell when it published a story about Ontario Liberal MPP Magaret Best who, after being dropped from her cabinet position in the new Wynne government, took a medical leave, which she is still on. (Read more…)
By bigcitylib, on April 8, 2013, at 7:01 pm …it’s just pictures, is back in The Globe. And Margaret Wente remains there. Globe is all but invisible behind its firewall these days. I’m not sure its worth boycotting.
By matttbastard, on February 23, 2013, at 11:03 am Silly Prince George Citizen, holding a staff writer to account for generously liberating other writers’ work:
To our shock and dismay, multiple incidents of plagiarism were uncovered from work over the last number of months. The staff member plagiarized various online new publications, while writing opinion pieces that appeared in this space. Entire paragraphs were copied and then blended into articles, removing a word here and there, or adding a clause to link certain phrases, but leaving the words of the original writer all or mostly intact, without attribution to the original writer or publication.
As of Tuesday morning, that
. . . → Read More: bastard.logic: Ethics in Exile
By bigcitylib, on February 3, 2013, at 11:51 am I’m shocked! shocked! And I’d forgotten she’s on the BOD of Energy Probe, which is probably where she picks up most of of anti-renewable nonsense in the first place.
By Beth, on January 30, 2013, at 3:18 pm I don’t want to be one of those grandpas who spoils the grandkids with a habitable planet. It’s the same reason I will not buy life insurance. I get hit by a bus and my family gets rich? Sorry, I don’t want anybody happy at my funeral. –Stephen Colbert’s facetious bit about President Obama’s “radical pro-survival agenda,” January 28, 2013
Sticks and stones can break my bones but “alarmist” doesn’t hurt me. I do find it irritating, however, and exhausting. In Terrance Corcoran’s Financial Post article, Extreme media alert, he trots out the over-used “alarmist” and “extremist” insults countless
. . . → Read More: Boreal Citizen: Nonsense Alert: When Canadian journalists succumb to climate denial folly
By bigcitylib, on November 24, 2012, at 5:09 pm …and still mis-attributin’ stuff:“An earlier online version of this column contained unclear attribution. This version has been clarified”.And still employed by the G&M. Luckily, Carol’s still on the case, and still got them hopping ove… . . . → Read More: BigCityLib Strikes Back: Wente Still Goin’
By Sixth Estate, on November 14, 2012, at 4:30 am I know I shouldn’t let her bait me like this, but I can’t help myself. The two-facedness of it is among the worst I’ve yet seen in the Canadian press. Last weekend, Canada’s favourite plagiarist, Globe & Mail columnist Margaret Wente, published an extraordinary broadside against young women, complaining that they weren’t charging enough for [...] . . . → Read More: The Sixth Estate: Wente: Promiscuous College Women Bad. Promiscuous Bureaucrats Good.
By Sixth Estate, on November 13, 2012, at 4:34 am I thought it might be nice to have a check-up and see how Canada’s favourite plagiarist is getting on with her career. Regular readers will remember that after Globe & Mail columnist Margaret Wente was caught plagiarizing other journalists by an Ottawa blogger, Media Culpa. Sixth Estate has also published evidence of Wente plagiarism. Some [...] . . . → Read More: The Sixth Estate: Wente Checkup: Men Not Paying Enough for Sex Anymore
By david, on November 7, 2012, at 2:26 am Romney Defeats Obama! U.S. President Barack Obama – perhaps not exactly as illustrated – holds up a copy of the Toronto Globe and Mail after his election victory last night. Or something like that. Maybe they just missed it that we don’t get a vote. Most Canadians don’t get to vote, that is, in the … . . . → Read More: Alberta Diary: Message to Canada’s media: OK guys, you can stop campaigning for that Romney guy now …
By Sixth Estate, on October 16, 2012, at 10:50 am Margaret Wente has published another column, sans apology for specific “careless mistakes” (as she calls them) in the past and also complete with her unique pre-moderated comments section (since she needs extra protection from rabid readers). And this one, entitled “The Best Protection Against Bullying Isn’t Legislation,” appears to rise to the standard I have been regularly setting for professional journalists: sources must be attributed, and word-for-word passages must be quoted. Thank you, Wente. That’s all I wanted from you.
However, since Wente did not explain in her most recent apology what she was apologizing for (or how
. . . → Read More: The Sixth Estate: Another Wente Column. Another Sixth Estate Investigation.
By Sixth Estate, on October 14, 2012, at 2:31 pm After brazening her way through a plagiarism scandal, Globe & Mail columnist Margaret Wente appears to be back on her exceptionally busy three-times-a-week pace, even though this hectic workstyle was what some fellow journalists blamed for her ethical lapses. I’m sure she wants to put it all behind her. But she will have to earn that right. A first step in that direction would be to avoid having any more of what one overly charitable commentator euphemized as “originality breakdowns.” Another would be to drop the unique, time-limited and pre-moderated comments section the Globe has set up
. . . → Read More: The Sixth Estate: Weeks After Plagiarism Scandal, Margaret Wente Still Suffering “Originality Breakdowns”
By Sixth Estate, on October 12, 2012, at 6:00 am After Globe & Mail resident plagiarist Margaret Wente returned to work this week following a brief hiatus to lick her wounds after plagiarism allegations from blogger Media Culpa went viral, the National Post waded into the fray yet again, this time via Jonathan Kay. Kay provides a superb and scathing review of the aftermath of the plagiarism affair, calling Wente guilty of a “delusional stupor” and dismissing the bizarre management response — first denial, then a “secret” and unspecified punishment — as “creepy and Soviet.”
But then Kay comes back to what has been all too common in the
. . . → Read More: The Sixth Estate: National Post: Wente Plagiarism Affair “Creepy and Soviet” — Plus, More Quote-Lifting by Wente
By Sixth Estate, on October 11, 2012, at 11:49 am The Globe & Mail’s resident plagiarist and cheap-shot artist Margaret Wente has finally resurfaced after a mysterious two-week disappearance, with a typically vapid column on the U.S. election. Strangely, the Globe & Mail seems to be introducing an extra-special moderated comment format just for Wente. They also had her print yet another vague non-apology, referring to the fact that she’s been doing this a long time (13 years!) and that she “apologizes” for the fact that she’s made some “careless mistakes.” Due to the ongoing link boycott, you will have to find your own way to
. . . → Read More: The Sixth Estate: Margaret Wente Returns, Issues Yet Another Apology for… “Careless Mistakes”
By Sixth Estate, on October 6, 2012, at 4:01 am It’s a day that ends with a Y and we still haven’t received a genuine and contrite apology, sans political cheap shots, from the Globe & Mail’s chief plagiarist Margaret Wente. (That’s not to be confused with the Globe’s chief cover-up artist, and chief self-promoter.) So it’s time to up the ante again. This will be the last Wente post for a while probably. Wente hasn’t resurfaced since her patronizing non-apology over a week ago. But if she publishes again, sans genuine apology, my review of her work will resume.
I have taken deeply to heart a recent
. . . → Read More: The Sixth Estate: Plagiarism Bad. Wenteism Okay. Plus, Yet More Fake-Feminist Silliness from Margaret Wente
By Sixth Estate, on October 5, 2012, at 10:44 am Recently a famous ethicist named Margaret Somerville, whom I will not link to because of the ongoing plagiarism link boycott, said that criticizing Wente’s plagiarism because we don’t like her politics is inappropriate. That, said the ethicist, would be “using ethics unethically.” We certainly wouldn’t want to do that, would we?
Instead, in the best spirit of Media Culpa, who really got the ball rolling on this, I’ve decided to up the ante by showing, in stark terms, why this was not just a single isolated error from a few years ago. And why, at least in my case,
. . . → Read More: The Sixth Estate: More Sloppy Quoting Work from Margaret Wente — Plus, Bonus Fake-Feminist Rubbish
By Sixth Estate, on October 4, 2012, at 2:57 pm The controversial McGill ethicist, well known for her stances on gay marriage and abortion, has come out in defence of Margaret Wente. You know, it was bad enough when experienced journalists like Terence Corcoran were defending plagiarism as freedom of the press. But she may be the first tenured academic to defend Wente in the press. I believe we’ve now reached the nadir of the debate.
Somerville has two arguments. The last one gives the game away, because it retreats to the same paranoid hyper-partisan territory already staked out by Terence Corcoran, Wente herself, and various other far-right propagandists in
. . . → Read More: The Sixth Estate: McGill Ethicist Margaret Somerville Sides With Margaret Wente in Plagiarism Scandal
By Sixth Estate, on October 4, 2012, at 4:01 am That should sound like a very straightforward and pedestrian proposition, given all I’ve had to say on the subject of Globe & Mail scribbler Margaret Wente’s plagiarizing ways over the last week or so. But apparently not so much.
I know many readers are getting rather bored with my tedious banging-on about this issue, because some of them have told me as much. I hope you’ll bear with me for at least a couple more posts, because it is actually important. The reason is this: we have arrived at a point where, at least in public, professional journalists cannot even
. . . → Read More: The Sixth Estate: Yes, Professional Columnists Can Get Away With Plagiarism
By bigcitylib, on October 2, 2012, at 10:10 am As noted by this gentleman on facebook, Margaret Wente’s tri-weekly column has not appeared in a week. Was her punishment for this kind of thing a suspension?
By bigcitylib, on October 1, 2012, at 3:27 pm The Plagiarer:
The New York Times reports that a gentleman named Broadway (not his real name) thumbs tweets for rapper 50 Cent (not his real name), who has nearly a quarter of a million followers. “He doesn’t actually use Twitter,” Broadway says. “But the energy of it is all him.”The Plagiaree, in the N.Y. Times:
A gentleman named Broadway (not his real name) thumbs tweets for rapper 50 Cent (not his real name), who has nearly a quarter million pseudonymous followers… “He doesn’t actually use Twitter,” Broadway says … “but the energy of it is all him.”
…
By Sixth Estate, on September 30, 2012, at 11:19 am In recent days I’ve done what I can to show readers how horrendously the national media is coping with the news that one of its own, accomplished Globe & Mail columnist Margaret Wente, plagiarizes in her columns. It hasn’t been pretty. First, the Globe unsuccessfully tried to dismiss the accusations as the rantings of an anonymous blogger. Later, reporters from other media offered a wide range of excuses for Wente, ranging from the intriguing thesis that plagiarism is obsolete in the Internet age to the rather ridiculous claim that accusing a reporter of plagiarism is akin to the Maoist purges
. . . → Read More: The Sixth Estate: How the Media Should Handle a Plagiarism Scandal
By Sixth Estate, on September 29, 2012, at 4:01 am The Margaret Wente plagiarism saga continues. On Friday, the Globe & Mail imported an American media export named Kelly McBride to offer yet another explanation for Wente’s sins:
Professional journalism isn’t facing a plagiarism problem…
Our originality breakdown results from many pressures — the overwhelming volume of writing incessantly pushed out into the digital space, the pressure on writers to feed a content beast that’s never satiated, the diminishing economic forces that support professional writing.
Uh-huh. Professional journalism certainly does have an originality problem. But that’s not what’s at issue here. We’re not accusing Wente of merely “relying too heavily
. . . → Read More: The Sixth Estate: Globe & Mail: Margaret Wente Suffered an “Originality Breakdown”
By david, on September 27, 2012, at 1:44 am Peggy Wente gets ready to write her next column. Globe and Mail columnists may not appear exactly as illustrated. Below, the real Ms. Wente, looking like she’s in a mug shot after being busted for plagiarism; the late Ken Adachi.
There has never been a shortage of plagiarism in Canadian letters.
The sins of the Globe and Mail’s Margaret Wente are literally nothing new, and hardly unique, although the highly entertaining social media furor about them may be.
Indeed, I feel just the tiniest bit of sympathy for Ms. Wente – who in the interests of full disclosure I must
. . . → Read More: Alberta Diary: Considering plagiarism? Just forget it! Nowadays you’ll be busted for sure!
By Simon, on September 26, 2012, at 5:07 pm I have to admit that I am enjoying every twist and turn in the Margaret Wente plagiarism scandal.Not because I really care whether she ripped off the words of others eh? For that snooty right-wing hack was NEVER original. And in her hands even the works of Shakespeare would read like monkey scribblings.But because she has the colossal gall to portray herself as a victim. Read more »
By Lorne, on September 26, 2012, at 8:21 am About two years ago, I wrote a blog post explaining why we cancelled our subscription to The Globe and Mail. At the same time, I sent an email with a link to the post to Globe editor-in-chief John Stackhouse, suggesting that if he wanted to know why he had lost a long-term subscriber, he should read my post.
Later that evening, I received a response from Stackhouse which I have never discussed in this blog, simply because I regarded it as private communication. While I am not prepared to reveal the content of the letter, I will tell you his
. . . → Read More: Politics and its Discontents: Social Media and Margaret Wente
By bigcitylib, on September 25, 2012, at 6:47 pm As those of you in our audience know, Margaret Wente has served as a regular face and voice on our Q media panel for the last three years. In that time she has brought interesting perspectives and arguments to the airwaves and played a role in the panel becoming a popular part of our programming.
Having said this, the job of Q’s biweekly media panel is to scrutinize media coverage, tactics, standards, and ethics. Given that mandate, we have regretfully decided to suspend our regular freelance relationship with Ms. Wente on this panel.
Ouch.
I suspect we’re seeing a bit
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