Jeff Gannon Guilty of Plagiarism?

from Raw Story via The left Coaster

A Jun. 17, 2003 article published by Jim Guckert, who wrote under the pen name Jeff Gannon, contains numerous identical quotes and similar phrasing to an article written by Melissa Beecher for the Waltham Daily News Tribune five days earlier. A comparison of the two articles compiled by Brynaert follows.

In the article about a Massachusetts couple who refused to let their home-schooled children take a standardized test, Guckert used quotes identical to Beecher's article without attribution. Beecher was the only reporter in attendance at the couple's home the day the Department of Social Services came to collect the children.

Guckert did not respond to two email requests for comment.

This is big news, because Jeff Gannon was invited to speak about being a journalist at the National Press Club. The attention it got, being something that I've already weighed in on.

Now if you read the article at Raw Story you can see the comparison between the articles. Basically Gannon changed a sentence structered "A then B" to a "B then A" and called it his own.

Now despite the fact that I would describe Jeff Gannon as prostitute paid by bush to screw America, I actually have to defend him here. I was taught how to do this in grade school. How to take someone else's work, and I believe the phrase was "make it your own."

...and I've read enough "news" articles to know that CNN, MSNBC, fox and the rest of the mainstream media are just better at it then Jeff was.

Almost everything on cable news come from the NY Times. It's why fox complains about the Times so much. 'Cause they have to read it, every day. If they didn't they wouldn't have anything to talk about.

So why take it out on Jeff just because he's not as good at "re-writing" as others are?

...and as I understand it Jeff Gannon was invited to speak at the National Press Club when the topic is "Jeff Gannon"... So big deal!


Maybe It's just me, but I'm more concerned about the stories that don't get written, then the ones that do. I'm more concerned about the facts being right, then made up, like they are at fox. Should journalists give credit when it's do? Sure, but these people aren't really journalists. On an average news day 6 or 7 real journalists provide the stories that the rest of the media will spend the day talking about.

See, that's what reporting is now-a-days. You "report" on what somebody else's journalist wrote, and that way, you really don't need to have a journalist of your own.

Jeff was just going with the flow.