Star turn

THIS POST HAS BEEN CORRECTED AND UPDATED:

This Star editorial A brief from the Star's weekend Life section is turning out to be very controversial. (Boldface is mine.)

Moon God Drinking Products Co., a skin care company in China, has offered a bounty of 1,000 yuan ($144) for every typographical or literary error found in a day's editions of four Chinese publications in an attempt to embarrass journalists into better writing.

Hao Mingjian, who came up with the idea for the bounty, said that "China's press has lost its polish in the past decade or two," which "reflects a chaotic cultural environment and shows people lack a sense of responsibility."

We applaud Hao's initiative, but we have learned over our years at the Star that it is impossible to embarrass journalists. Public humiliation is our stock in trade.

If the face cream mogul truly wants to improve the quality of the Chinese papers, he should try a carrot, not a stick.

Our colleagues are never so dedicated to their craft as when there's free food on offer.

And if Hao were to promise generous beer rations for a job well done, the papers would be error-free within the month.

And we're almost certain that our counterparts at the Globe, the Sun and the Post would agree to a similar proposal here.

According to Regret the Error, the news item the ''editorial'' copy is based on is more than 10 years old. What's more, the Star and the two U.S. papers which also ran it, did so without verification or proper attribution, apparently lifting it from Randy Cassingham's thisistrue.com, a web site which publishes weird and whacky news. Reports Regret the Error's Craig Silverman:

As Cassingham noted in an email to us after we directed him to the Star editorial, it appears that the Star even chose to crib and slightly alter Cassingham's line that "journalists can't be embarrassed." Not to mention the fact that the paper used his item pretty much verbatim.

"Note they even stole my tagline for the story - my comment on the story that's my stock in trade as a news commentary columnist - and published it as their own," he told us via email.  "That's the very definition of plagiarism, isn't it?"

The irony of this - a very large media mistake in a story about media mistakes - is rich. But Cassingham  has every right to be upset. All three papers failed their readers by not checking the wire to verify the story. But the Star's infractions are by far the worst. The paper lifted the item and failed to credit any source. Then it plagiarized.

Maybe, maybe not. That's because, if a story originates with a wire service which we pay for - in this case it's supposedly Reuters, at least according to the first thisistrue.com reference - it is arguably not plagiarism. (Although copying word for word without attribution sure is.) That said, I personally would not use original reporting without crediting the source, if only to cover my butt in case the source is wrong.

As for the apparently lifted line about journalists and embarrassment, that's a little trickier - although goodness knows, it's a natural crack to make, especially given the subject matter of embarrassing journos into not making typos.

That said, it's not my job to explain or excuse what the Star does. That's up to public editor Sharon Burnside who can be expected to look into this and report to readers. I sincerely hope she does, and just as soon as she returns to the office.

Meanwhile, the story is ripping through the media blogosphere on some very distinguished sites such as Poynter Online and Editor & Publisher. Oh, and on this not-so-distinguished site too.

In whose weird world is it a crime to let the reader, viewer or listener know where the reporter got that quote, that bit of exclusive information dug out and uncovered by another news organization, etc.? What idiocy is involved in decisions that are made daily in every newsroom in this country, anyway, to pretend to the reader/viewer/listener that the scoop that everyone is following today, the quote that has got some politician fired, that scandal that was uncovered, or, in this case, an editorial, wasn't reported and/or produced first by another network, news organization, website, magazine, etc?

Talk about embarrassing.

UPPITY DATE: I made a mistake last night in describing the brief as an ''editorial.'' It was editorial, but not a capital E-editorial. That's because it appeared online without any context, looking like a capital E-editorial. A correction is in the works and will be posted, along with the restored link, asap.

Meanwhile, Regret the Error and other sites that picked up the story also called it an editorial. Will Regret the Error regret the error as I do?

Comments

[Mike]

Givent hat Marv Albert was publicly outed for cross-dressing and deviant sexual practices and was back reporting on basketball in a year, I'd say journalists can't be embarrassed. But your milage may vary.

[Classic]

_Page L3, that's a funny place for an editorial.
see here: http://classicquarters.blogspot.com/2006/01/dirty-task.html

[Antonia Z.]

You know Classic, I was so distratcted by Dolly Parton's puppies myself I missed the item entirely in the treeware edition. This morning I did a scrounge through two week's worth of papers in the old grey box.

Anyway, as you can see, I fixed my post. The rest is up to the Star.

[Regret the Error]

Regret the Error's post has been corrected to reflect the fact that it wasn't a Star editorial. We'll also note it in our weekly corrections post this Friday. The clarification is appreciated.

An important note about the charge of plagiarism:

The story was indeed a Reuters story from 10 years ago. The original is posted on Regret. And the Star's writer didn't crib from Reuters, as might be allowed if they sourced it properly.

The Star's writer stole from Cassgingham's summary of the Reuters report. The first two sentences of Casshingham's post -- which are different from the Reuters story -- and the first two in the Star story are exactly the same. The Star's writer likely never saw the original Reuters piece. If they had, they would have realized it was 10 years old.

Instead, they stole it from Cassingham verbatim. That makes it much more serious than just lifting wire copy and not attributing it.

[Malcolm]

I don't really agree with the argument that it's okay to lift wire copy anyway, even if you pay for it. It is still someone else's work, reporting, prose. Why would anyone want to lift someone else's work and put their own byline on it? And if reporters are told by their news organizations that it's okay to do that, who can blame them for getting lazy with other sources?

[Kevin]

I agree with Malcolm. As a university student, just because I pay or do not pay for a service that provides me with copy, does not allow for me to use that source without creditting the source. If I were to copy a portion of one of Star's story, verbatim or not, without crediting the source, that would be grounds for dismissal from the university. The "reporter" should be held to even higher standards than I the student.