MCLC: China to NYT: plagiarize this

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Martin Winter <dujuan99 at gmail.com>
Subject: China to NYT: plagiarize this
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Source: Financial Times (10/29/12):
http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2012/10/29/china-to-new-york-times-plagiar
ise-this/#ixzz2BAK6kPG4

China to NY Times: Plagiarise this!
By Simon Rabinovitch

The New York Times just ain’t what it used to be. It’s full of
sensationalism, plagiarism and out-and-out fake news. Loyal readers are
losing their faith.

Or so goes the verdict from that arbiter of fine journalism: the People’s
Daily, mouthpiece of the Communist Party of China.

The People’s Daily made a crude attempt at a hatchet job on the New York
Times in a lengthy opinion piece on its website on Monday. The immediate
prompt was clearly the New York Times account published last Friday of how
Premier Wen Jiabao’s family has accumulated “hidden riches” of about
$2.7bn, though the People’s Daily refrained from mentioning that specific
Article.

Instead, it chose to rehash the New York Times’ two biggest reporting
debacles of the past decade and various laments about how it has lost its
way under the headline, “New York Times: Scandals multiply and reputation
deteriorates”.

Apart from the obvious irony in the fact that the People’s Daily is trying
to pass judgment about reporting standards, there is another, even more
basic problem with its criticism of the Times: its words appear to have
been
almost entirely plagiarised.

The opinion piece was authored by ‘Lao Ren’, which is likely to be a
pseudonym. It begins with a preamble about how reporting standards at the
Times have gone downhill: “This venerable media brand proclaims that its
news is accurate and reliable. But in recent years, there has been an
explosion in plagiarism and fabrication by its journalists.”

It then describes the 2010 case of plagiarism by Zachery Kouwe, a business
reporter, and the infamous 2003 outing of Jayson Blair’s fabrications.
Next, the People’s Daily shifts its focus to a book, “Journalistic Fraud”,
which argued on its publication in 2003 that the New York Times was guilty
of distorting the news.

Finally, it closes with a long quote from a self-declared once-loyal reader
who said that the Times coverage from the Iraq war to climate change had
led
him to give up on the paper.

What the People’s Daily failed to mention was that virtually every last
sentence in its opinion piece had previously been published. A quick search
revealed the following:

1. The opening criticism of the Times’ fallen standards and the
description of the Kouwe case? From a 2010 report by China News Agency.
2. The description of the Blair case? Lifted straight from two People’s
Daily articles in 2003 (at least it is copying itself).
3. The account of “Journalistic Fraud”, the book? From a 2003 article by
China News Agency.
4. And that final quote from the once-loyal reader? A translation by
Dongxi (a now-defunct translation website) of a 2011 article that appeared
on Splicetoday.com.

Even by the standards of plagiarism-prone Chinese media, it takes a certain
brazenness to perpetrate such an extensive copy-and-paste job when
preaching
about journalistic integrity.

With additional reporting by Gu Yu