Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Plagiarism Trumps Lies

Keep America America? What does that even mean?

On the other hand, come on. If Biden had said "Keep America America," Rush would have been all over him echoing the KKK slogan Keep America American," just assuming he'd misprounounced the last word.

WaPo Author who Wrongly Tied Romney to KKK Resigns Over Plagiarism

RUSH: Andrew Breitbart's Big Journalism website. "When Washington Post journalist Elizabeth Flock..." Really? Is that her name? Flock? (groans) Okay. "When Washington Post journalist Elizabeth Flock wrote a post last year falsely accusing Mitt Romney of using a Ku Klux Klan slogan in his campaign speech, she was not fired or disciplined. But when [Washington Post journalist Elizabeth] Flock stole from the work of another mainstream organization and did not properly attribute, she abruptly 'resigned' from the Washington Post conveniently and coincidentally before another editor's note went up on her post that described it as having 'serious factual errors' and 'a significant ethical lapse.'

"Flock told AFP that 'she resigned on Friday before the Post published a second editor's note about her work and that she was not pressured to quit.' A Washington Post spokesman said they would not comment on personnel matters. Flock is the latest member of the mainstream media caught plagiarizing, which should be treated with the same shame that doping is in professional sports but is not. But the more disturbing question is why she was not fired or disciplined for fabricating a piece about Republicans that showed extreme negligence at best or complete dishonesty and hackery at worst.

"In December 2011, Flock wrote a story wherein she tried everything she could to frame Republicans as racist by falsely writing that Romney stated he wanted to 'Keep America American.' Romney really said 'Keep America America,' but those were not the words that Flock wanted to hear. She used the misquote to tie Romney to the Ku Klux Klan, which had used the 'Keep America American' slogan in the past. If Flock had worked for an obscure publication, her article may have been overlooked. But because she wrote it for the Washington Post, numerous other outlets took the story as fact and ran with it," that Romney said he wanted to "Keep America American."

"After airing multiple segments based on Flock's falsities, MSNBC anchors Thomas Roberts and Chris Matthews had to apologize, with Matthews saying that, 'It was irresponsible and incendiary of us to do this, and it showed an appalling lack of judgment. We apologize, we really do, to the Romney campaign.'" Chris? (This is an aside here.) A little professional advice. Honestly. This is the way you need to react to everything fed to you by Media Matters. You need to assume that it's wrong, made up, or totally taken out of context.

Anyway, the point that the Breitbart people make is here's this woman who purposely goes to the end of the world to lie about, to mischaracterize what Mitt Romney said in order to make him look like he's a racist. Nothing happened to her. But she plagiarizes somebody else in the mainstream media? "Uh, uh, uh! Can't tolerate that," and she's gone. So the message is if you're a mainstream journalist, you can go ahead and lie about and mischaracterize Republicans all you want, and you might even get a raise. We don't know. But certainly you won't lose your gig. But if you plagiarize from another hallowed mainstream journalist, then you are in trouble.

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