The Rogues' Gallery II... and III

Randall Hoven has published an update  to his original story at the American Thinker in which he adds 21 more plagiarists, fabricators and frauds to his original catalog. Since he didn't add most of the ones I sent him -- he says he's got too many to deal with now, and we're on our own from here on out -- I'll include them, over the jump. I'll italicise the ones that are in Hoven's list. I'll probably miss a few, as the list is getting loooooong. 

He's found a number of "dang, forgot about that one" cases, like several ABC News stories that were actually staged stunts, and The New Republic's fabricator Ruth Shalit (Shalit, Glass, and now Foer. High standards over there... "high" as in "Cheech and Chong" maybe). 

He also suggests you look at Famous Plagiarists.com. To which I'd add Dan Kennedy's media blog. Dan is a Boston-based media critic, a fine example of a principled liberal, and a decent and understanding human being... but he can't help writing about fraud scandals because, I guess, plagiarism and fraud are so central to media today. Sorry.

While I'm adding, let's not forget The Museum of Hoaxes, Regret the Error, and Romenesko, all of which regularly feature the routine and banal misconduct of the press.

It's also instructive, if you look into these things, to see how individuals get busted and then move on... and up. Mike Barnicle, serial fabricator, is still working in papers and TV. Janet Cook, legendary fabricator, cashed in on TV. Peter Arnett has never lacked a platform despite a thirty-year record of fabrication that's gotten him walking papers several times. (Maybe I should change the order of those so that they're A, B, C like the Canadian quads. I'm sure I can find a "D"). 

And the same TV producer and executive, Richard "Rick" Kaplan, was involved in different hands-on capacities in the CNN Tailwind fraud and the ABC Food Lion fraud. (I have seen somewhere things alleging that he was also involved in the Dateline NBC exploding trucks incident, but he wasn't among the producers fired or executives resigning at that time, so that claim may be bogus). Kaplan, despite being fingered by a jury for fraud in the ABC case, and exposed as the author of blood libel in the Tailwind case, has since only moved up, serving as head of MSNBC and currently producer of the "fake but accurate" CBS Evening News with Katie Couric.

Yeah, the high standards of the national media. Hoot.

More for the Rogues' Gallery.

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Peter Arnett:  Pulitzer-winning career fabricator. Specialized in stories of US armed forces atrocities with three major phony stories: the Vietnam "destroy the village to save it" quote, which the man says he never said; the Gulf War "Baby Milk Factory," and the Tailwind fabrication (which you mention, without mentioning the three perpetrators: Arnett, April Oliver, and Jack Smith). Arnett was fired by CNN over that fraud, which was largely his doing. (Technically, they let his contract run out, but Tailwind was his last appearance on camera for the network). His career rebounds for each bust. He was fired by NBC, MSNBC and National Geographic in 2003 for appearing voluntarily on an Iraqi (i.e. Saddam) TV propaganda broadcast.

In 1965, he reported that the US was using poison gas (a theme he'd return to throughout his career). His story turned out to be plagiarized -- from Radio Hanoi.

http://www.afa.org/magazine/may2003/road.pdf       (search the .pdf for "Arnett")

World Net Daily is not the world's most reliable source, but Tom Marzullo (a personal friend and fellow vet of Special Forces) who is quoted in the article is vault-solid, and gives an overview of Arnett's career:

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=14526

Ben Tre "destroy the village" is debunked in Peter Braestrup's book Big Story, also here:

http://www.aim.org/publications/aim_report/1977/08b.html

Arnett "baby-milk factory" and "air-raid shelter" propaganda broadcasts, gulf war I

http://www.aim.org/media_monitor/A404_0_2_0_C/

http://www.spiritus-temporis.com/peter-arnett/the-baby-milk-factory-controversy.html

Baby-milk and bunker stories:

http://www.globaled.org/curriculum/cm19f.html

This report does not cite by name Arnett's reporting of the baby-milk and Amiriyah bunker stories, but Arnett (or perhaps his puppetmasters in the Iranian ministries) was the source of both, and the report details the problems with the reporting:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/ogc/apparatus/printer.html

Arnett Dismissal 2003

http://www.silha.umn.edu/spring2003.htm

Even Joe Conason, a political ally of Arnett who shares his contempt for the US military, thought that the news outlets were right to fire him for his 2003 stunt:

http://dir.salon.com/story/opinion/conason/2003/04/01/arnett/index.html

Anthony Flint: Boston Globe, quietly  transferred from City Hall Bureach Chief to the business section, after being caught seeking favors from the Mayor and other City Hall insiders.

http://72.166.46.24/archive/features/00/07/20/DON_T_QUOTE_ME.html

Jeff Jacoby:  Conservative columnist.  suspended without pay for four months by the Boston Globe in 2000 for using an essay written by Rush Limbaugh's father, a Paul Harvey monologue, and material from the Internet  without attribution.

(numerous links online, including the Dan Kennedy column above under Anthony Flint: http://72.166.46.24/archive/features/00/07/20/DON_T_QUOTE_ME.html)

Here's another Kennedy piece primarily about Jacoby, with more information on Flint also:

http://72.166.46.24//archive/features/00/07/13/DON_T_QUOTE_ME.html

Charlie LeDuff:  Pulitzer Prize winner, NYT. Career plagiarist who was hired at the Times after being busted for plagiarism at his previous employer, the East Bay Monthly in the San Francisco bay area. (He has made some kind of admission to his Times editors that his masters' thesis was also not all his own work, but they have never revealed what he admitted). At the Times, he wrote a major story on the Los Angeles River that won him a lot of acclaim -- until it turned out that it was actually mostly lifted from a 1999 book by Blake Gumprecht. (LeDuff also lifted a 2001 story from another Gumprecht book, but in that case rewrote it enough that it wasn't actually plagiarism). 

Because LeDuff claims to be a Native American and got his job through the same affirmative-action program as Jayson Blair, the Times, sensitive about disparate treatment of minority and white plagiarists, didn't discipline him. LeDuff's editor, Jim Roberts, has made it clear that he doesn't even want to hear about other instances of plagiarism: the fix is in. "You're wasting your time," he told a magazine reporter. LeDuff continues his writing (or at least, typing) career. 

http://www.sanfran.com/content_areas/home/view_printable.php?story_id=215

http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2004/01/piling_on_leduf.php

Douglas Martin:  NYT. Copied five passages in an obituary of war hero Vera Atkins from the Times of London. Busted by readers but not punished by the Times, or even mentioned in the editor's note on his plagiarism. Contacted by medic critic Dan Kennedy, he defended plagiarism as his routine mode of operation while on overseas assignment.

http://72.166.46.24/archive/features/00/07/20/DON_T_QUOTE_ME.html

Dana Priest:  Pulitzer winner. Career fabricator, Washington Post. Fabricated a story in 1997 alleging a "tailhook underground" that worked to undermine female Naval Aviators. With Susan Schmidt and Vernon Loeb, ran a bogus Page-1 tale that Jessica Lynch was a heroine, debunked when Lynch was rescued. Got testy when called on it (a whole catfight between Priest and Elaine Donnelly of the anti-women-in-combat Center for Military Readiness is in the second link.

http://cmrlink.org/PeopleintheNews.asp?docID=197

http://cmrlink.org/PeopleintheNews.asp?docID=198

http://www.cmrlink.org/WomenInCombat.asp?docID=196

On this interview, Priest uses a different excuse for her Lynch fabrication. To Donnelly (first link above), she claimed that she had multiple sources from senior military people; to Brooke Gladstone, she blame "initial intelligence reports from the field" and implies her source was in the CIA:

http://www.onthemedia.org/yore/transcripts/transcripts_062003_draft.html

The problem with lying is you have to remember which lies you told to which people. Inability to do that seems to be the only problem Ms. Priest has with lying.

This is the Washington Post's official admission that the Lynch story was bogus, which (interestingly) does not mention Priest as one of the three writers -- even though Priest has admitted (at the other links) that it was principally her reporting.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A53917-2003Apr18

John Schultz: Chairman of the BU media department, resigned his chairmanship over a trifling (seriously) plagiarism gaffe in 1999.

http://72.166.46.24//archive/features/00/07/13/DON_T_QUOTE_ME.html

Paul Szep:  The Boston Globe editorial cartoonist was quietly suspended in 1996 for copying at least two cartoons -- one from the cover of Mother Jones magazine (hard to imagine a surer way to get caught, given the Globe's liberal readership). I am not sure if Szep has a Pulitzer, sorry. He may not have plagiarized or fabricated enough.

http://72.166.46.24/archive/features/00/07/13/DON_T_QUOTE_ME2.html

http://72.166.46.24/archive/features/00/07/20/DON_T_QUOTE_ME.html

Brian Walski: LA Times photographer, canned in 2003 for photoshopping a picture that was syndicated to other papers and ran on Page 1 of the Hartford Courant.

http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=28082

http://www.silha.umn.edu/spring2003.htm