Ann Coulter: now a plagiarist?

Question

The New York Post became the first print media to publish reports that three major segments of the book "Godless" were incidents of "textbook plagiarism" that would result in any college student flunking a class. The company iParadigms invented software that analyzes works and compares them to previously published works. Publications from which Ann Coulter lifted text include publications from Planned Parenthood, the Heritage Foundation, and the Los Angeles Times.

Link:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002765299

Now, Universal Press Syndicate is investigating her columns. Is this the end?

netjr: clearly, you're not either - doofus. Please spell your insults correctly.

JFra472449:

Plagiarism is a major problem in writing. As a writer, it is on par with committing murder. Her ebook is just one instance. If you bothered to read the article, they found countless incidents in her columns.

Okay:

It is the conservative New York POST (not the NYT, you dolt) and second, it was commissioned by the POST and is not "teaching institutions" going after her.

READ THE STUFF BEFORE YOU START CRITICISING FACTS! You only make yourself look ignorant. Plagiarism is a "crime" in the writing world and the charges are serious.

Answer 1

hahaah... that's hilarious... apparently bad people do bad things... go figure

I'm not so sure that people that read and believe coulter actually know what plagiarism is... or maybe it's just that when a conservative does something... it's ok... much like Rush and drugs... too bad the rest of us have to play by the rules...

Answer 2

Someone has a lot of time to waste. I read her book, had some interesting stuff in it. But over all it was over 300 pages long. Someone took the time to go page by page to see if she forgot to give a proper book mark?

She had several bookmarks and sources quoted and gave credit in several areas.

With all this hoopla coming out about her book I am starting to give it more credit. They have attacked how she said what she did and now they are attacking the academic properties, but no one has answered what she has said in the book. I think it is more telling that they want to draw attention to 5 paragraphs that might not have been properly bookmarked rather than comment on her assertions.

Makes me believe she might be telling the truth with the misdirection on the comebacks to it.

Answer 3

interesting! Another fibber!!


Barrie, CEO of iParadigms, told The Post that one 25-word passage from the "Godless" chapter titled "The Holiest Sacrament: Abortion" appears to have been lifted nearly word for word from Planned Parenthood literature published at least 18 months before Coulter's 281-page book was released.

A separate, 24-word string from the chapter "The Creation Myth" appeared about a year earlier in the San Francisco Chronicle with just one word change - "stacked" was changed to "piled."

Another 33-word passage that appears five pages into "Godless" allegedly comes from a 1999 article in the Portland (Maine) Press Herald.

Meanwhile, many of the 344 citations Coulter includes in "Godless" "are very misleading," said Barrie, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, where he specialized in pattern recognition.

"They're used purely to try and give the book a higher level of credibility - as if it's an academic work. But her sloppiness in failing to properly attribute many other passages strips it of nearly all its academic merits," he told The Post.

Barrie says he also ran Coulter's Universal Press columns from the past 12 months through iThenticate and found similar patterns of cribbing.

Her Aug. 3, 2005, column, "Read My Lips: No New Liberals," about U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter, includes six passages, ranging from 10 to 48 words each, that appeared 15 years earlier in the same order in an L.A. Times article, headlined "Liberals Leery as New Clues Surface on Souter's Views."

But nowhere in that column does she mention the L.A. Times or the story's writer, David G. Savage.

Her June 29, 2005, column, "Thou Shalt Not Commit Religion," incorporates 10 facts on National Endowment for the Arts-funded work that originally appeared in the same order in a 1991 Heritage Foundation report, "The National Endowment for the Arts: Misusing Taxpayers' Money." But again, the Heritage Foundation isn't credited.

"Just as Coulter plays free and loose with her citations in 'Godless,' she obviously does the same in her columns," Barrie said.

Answer 4

She has so many sources quoted that it is likely she credited the source materials used by planned parent and the rest. It is funny to see the teaching establishment lash at her, she certainly beats them up in the later chapters. I think this is simply a case of a counter attack.

Answer 5

GET OUT, the New York Times trying to put a conservative writer in a negative light. Who woulda thunk it.
(Not to mention get a little of the heat off them for sharing State Secrets for the second time in a year).

P.s. WHO CARES. Stopping checking her commas and apostrophes, and answer what she says.

Answer 6

Ann Coulter is godless.

Answer 7

She has nice legs.

Answer 8

LOL....guess what she's not in college duefess....