Possumblog

Another'un

I'm not really surprised, shocked, outraged, or anything else. Steevil (famous sailor and NASA rocket scientist) sent me a link to this story on the WBAL radio website up there in Baldymore, in which a local reporter is gigged and sacked for plagiarism.

More than anything else, it's just sad, and even sadder is the seeming inability of reporters caught in this type of situation to either 1) come clean and admit it, or 2) deny it with enough forcefulness to be believable. However, the quote that best illustrated this point, which (paraphrased) said it was basically no big deal and only a few paragraphs, seems to have been changed in the time that it took for me to read the article, and the version of the article now in place.

The earlier version read like this, which I had to go and find on the 11:00 am version still carried on the ABC 7 affiliate's website:

[...] "I made mistakes," Olesker said as he cleaned out his desk.

Olesker wrote a twice-a-week column in the Maryland section for 27 years, having served in other capacities for two years. His most recent column appeared Tuesday, his last day.

"I am sorry to say that in the course of doing those columns, I unintentionally screwed up a handful of paragraphs. I am embarrassed by my sloppiness," he said. [...]

Now, why the updated article didn't carry that, I don't know. It now reads much more sympathetically toward Olesker, at least to me, but it does seem strange that the whole article would be rewritten so thoroughly.

In any event, I'm sure it's easy to be caught up in such things in an environment where there seems to be a sort of general understanding of just how much you can steal before it's called stealing. The problem seems to be much more one of transparency--no one seems willing to let the readership in on the secret handshake or high-sign, and at least for me, it leads to a profound sense of mistrust over what gets reported. Much like the updated version of the story, with no mention of earlier versions that might have colored things differently, it's difficult to feel comfortable that you've received factual information.

As for embarrassment and sloppiness, sorry, but there are a lot more media types out there who pump out embarrassing handfuls of slop on a daily basis--either take it like a man and admit it went beyond mere sloppiness, or just shut up about it. If it really was just a matter of slop, no one would be asking you to pack up a paper box with your belongings, and I think you'd probably be having a bigger fit about it.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at January 4, 2006 01:50 PM