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Words Matter
Several days ago, contributor P. D. Pepe brought to our attention a forensic examination by Christopher Ketchum, published in the New Republic, of a series of plagiarisms committed by Chris Hedges, formerly a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter & now an independent "journalist."
Not having read the Ketchum piece, I noted that it is now pretty easy to inadvertently plagiarize another's work. A good deal of research is cutting & pasting original or secondary sources, then using those sources to illustrate whatever you're writing about, & attributing the ideas and/or language to the original sources where you've used their material. Even if you use your own language, & it it quite different from the way your source expressed it, you still attribute the idea to him/her, & you cite book & page where the author expressed that idea.
So if Akhilleus writes that Bill Kristol is a "walking, talking cartoon," Since Akhilleus is a pseudonym, I might write, "One of my contributors likened Kristol to a cartoon," & I'd link the Reality Chex page where Akhilleus wrote the comment. I only "copied" one word of Akhilleus's piece & obviously it isn't necessary to footnote that, but what I lifted was his idea.
Nonetheless, since standard writing is, well, standard, it is sometimes difficult to tell your own work from something someone else has written. Over time, I might forget that it wasn't my original idea that Kristol was a cartoon character, & I might fail to attribute the idea to Akhilleus. I might even write, "Kristol is a walking, talking cartoon." That's a standard English sentence that lifts Akhilleus's original phrase, & I could easily forget it was not of my own making. It sounds like something I would say or write. Akhilleus could either call me out on it or let it go & take it as the highest form of flattery.
However, since reading the Ketchum piece, I've learned that lifting a phrase or two is not what Hedges did. Some of the incidences of Hedges' plagiarism are indefensible. They had to have been intentional. To make matters much worse, he clearly lied about how he came to include extensive passages from the work of another writer. In the most egregious -- and most obvious -- case Ketchum cited, Hedges pretended that he had conducted interviews that a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter had in fact conducted & previously published. Hedges copied the Inquirer reporter & his interviewees almost verbatim. You cannot forget that you never sought out or spoke to or even met the people somebody else interviewed. When confronted by a Harper's editor, Hedges alleged that the Inquirer reporter told Hedges it was A-okay to lift his original reporting without attribution. This is not even plausible, & Matt Katz, the Inquirer reporter, of course denied it. No reporter, nor his paper, would permit such a thing.
In another case, which is sort of funny & tremendously audacious, Hedges lifted a few sentences from Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. Since the novel is often required reading in college American lit classes, some readers were certain to catch Hedges on this. In addition, Hemingway's novelistic style is not standard English, & a writer would know, in rereading & editing his own work, that he was not the author of the Hemingway stuff. Hemingway writing contents notwithstanding, nobody else really writes like Hemingway. (In fact, that's the point of Hemingway writing contests.)
At this point, I would say the only reason to read Hedges is to find out what other people are saying. Were I an editor or a publisher, I would not accept any material from Hedges. He should be toast. The fact that publications -- including the Nation -- are still willing to defend Hedges & accept his work is disturbing. ...
... Update: Hedges responds to Ketchum's New Republic piece in a statement published by TNR. Ketchum & the New Republic respond to Hedges' statement. If you read the original article & the newly-linked responses, I think you'll come down on the side of TNR. Hedges' response does not comport with what multiple sources told Ketchum & others. This doesn't seem to be a case of he-said/he-said. I think Ketchum made his case, especially on the worst incidents.
P.S. On the subject of words, see also Jeff Shesol's post on Justice Scalia's crafty manipulations of the meaning of words, linked in today's Commentariat. I knew Elena Kagan would be a smart jurist. (I'm still not sure she'll be a smart liberal jurist.) It looks as if Nino has met his match. No wonder he pouts all the time.
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Reader Comments (2)
Akhilleus is a walking, talking cartoon....
Wait, who said that?
All this back and forth between Hedges and TNR is making me dizzy. But the most head turning thing of all is the fact that Hedges made so many of these "mistakes" and "formatting errors" that it's hard to believe that some of these many, many instances of plagiarism have not been done with his full knowledge. After all, it's not like someone else is doing the writing. Is it, Chris? If you're just a figurehead (which I don't believe either), then you can get out of jail (sort of) by saying you're not much different from George Will and Maureen Dowd who use researchers and other writers to feed them material.
Even in that case, however, the person whose name is at the top of the page is still responsible for what goes out.
Hedges' complaints sound a tad pathetic. And whiny. And because this has been going on for so long, I'm in agreement with Marie that this guy, for all his awards, should be a pariah in the publishing community. Sorry, Chris, you broke the rule. And it's not an obscure or unwritten one either. It's well known to anyone who starts writing from the point of their first school essay.
Don't steal stuff from other writers and pass it off as your own.
It happens more often, I'm afraid, than I care to think about. Some years ago I wrote a speech for a boss, at his request. I neither expected nor cared that my name would be mentioned as the author of both the ideas and the words. What I did not expect was that my boss would announce at the top that the speech was his work and the product of long months of his thinking through difficult issues. He got a lot of buzz for my speech. I never wrote anything else for him. His response to my complaint was that, coming from him, people would take it more seriously, and I should just shut up and take one for the team.
I've also seen essays and pieces I've written for one site show up, word for word, on other sites. I haven't seen anyone taking credit for the writing, so it's not as bad, as long as my name shows up somewhere. The difficulty arises when it appears on a site they're making money off.
The problem is that words and ideas can be so personal. They are the product of one's own experience and imagination. That's not to say that three or four or five of you, out here, can't have pretty much the same ideas or aren't thinking along similar lines. That's not unusual. I have to admit though, that some days, after I've posted something, I see, on some other site, another writer with almost the exact idea. I don't think they've been spying on what I wrote (even when similar analogies are employed), but I'm afraid the opposite will seem to be the case, that someone will think that I've purloined someone else's neat idea. This is just my own paranoia, but it underlines how sensitive a subject this is (or should be) to anyone who even dabbles in words and ideas.
Now I don't produce anywhere near the output of someone like a Chris Hedges, but maybe that's the problem. When you're under the gun to keep pushing out content, I can see where the occasional slip may occur. But once it happens on a regular basis, and you've been called on it, and it still happens, then I'm off your side. In fact, I may never read another word you write. And that's too bad because you might have some great stuff to say. Or maybe it's someone else's stuff. But also, maybe now I'm thinking that you're a jerk and don't care what you have to say anymore.
As Marie points out, the arrogance of swiping lines from an absurdly well known Hemingway novel is beyond chutzpah. It seems to be the sign of someone who just can't help himself. And if he's stealing like that, how can you trust anything else he writes?
It's just a bad thing all around. To paraphrase Dash Hammett, it's bad for every writer, everywhere.
On the first page of Tom Rachman's new novel "The Rise and Fall of Great Powers" is this wonderful sentence. Reminds me of several pundits I've read from time to tome.
“He [Fogg] was a man who formed opinions as he spoke them, or perhaps afterward, requiring him to ramble at length to grasp what he believed.”