WHOSE WORDS THESE ARE I THINK I KNOW

Jerry Harkins

"It turns out that Senator John Walsh, Democrat of Montana, may have plagiarized a paper he wrote while a student at the Army War College in 2007.  If so, this would call his judgment and possibly his integrity into question, something the voters in Montana might want to take into consideration."

For this exposé, the voters of Montana and we are indebted to The New York Times which went to a lot of trouble and expense to produce a lengthy front page story.  We and the good people of Montana will, I expect, make up our minds without losing much sleep over it.

We are not told how The Times glommed onto this heinous crime.  They no doubt had an tipster who wished to remain anonymous because he or she did not want to jeopardize a longstanding friendship with the Senator.  Not that it makes much difference.  The Times has been struggling manfully to reduce its dependence on anonymous sources but with little success.  It assures us that it has a detailed written policy on the subject and that it never grants this grace casually.  It reminds me of Brutus’ wonderful circularity in trying to persuade the Roman people that assassinating Julius Caesar was a moral undertaking:  “… believe me 
for mine honour, and have respect to mine honour, that
 you may believe.”

By now, plagiarists and prospective plagiarists should know that The Times is obsessed with a subject that bores almost everyone else.  I wouldn’t be surprised if they scrutinized every term paper submitted in every college class in America.  For a reporter, to be assigned to the plagiarism beat has got to be the most tedious purgatory imaginable.  The reason, of course, is that the editors have been stung so often themselves.  Thus they get all discombobulated whenever they get wind that some publication contains material of questionable authorship.  It can be almost anything in almost any publication:  the newspaper of record swoons whenever it thinks writers have abused the trust of readers.  To be fair, it reserves its highest vigilance for its own reporters.  Still, such excitement is not good for the old lady so, as a public service, I thought I would review the moral theology of prose promoted as non-fiction.  Or, to borrow the current idiom, "fake news."

As you know there is a moral compact between writers and readers.  In overview, it amounts to this:  you don’t abuse my intelligence and I won’t abuse yours.  There is an exception for critics and pundits who can say any damn fool thing they want because nobody pays attention to them anyway.  Otherwise the deal is the writer will not deliberately mislead the reader in any way.  I will try to warn you about my biases insofar as I know them.  I will not report opinion as fact and I will do my best to avoid logical fallacies.  Oh, yes, I will not try to pass off the work of others as my own.  There are at least two reasons for this.  First, it frequently represents theft of intellectual property.  This objection is getting harder to sustain in a world where information is ubiquitous and wants to be free but it is still a violation of the seventh commandment and partakes of at least four of the seven deadly sins.  Second, it is abusive to the reader in that it imputes to the writer and the work an authority they have no claim to.

A compact, of course, needs at least two parties.  For the reader, the first clause of that agreement is “Caveat lector.”  It is crucial that you know not to believe everything you read.  As an adult, you have a responsibility to assess what you read which means to be familiar with basic logic and routine fallacies.  Moreover, you must never suspend your natural skepticism.  Practically everybody who wants to communicate with you has something to sell whether it’s salvation or snake oil.  Priests, pundits, politicians, journalists and convicted felons all have a shtick.  It may be sublime or ridiculous but they want you to believe it and, to persuade you, they may employ tactics that are less than kosher.  Does this surprise you?

Think about Caesar’s Gallic Wars.  The purpose of the book was not to set forth a definitive history of the conflict but to promote the idea that its author, who wanted to be Emperor, was a military genius.  Now, first, remember the natural skepticism you were born with.  The phrase “military genius” is almost always an oxymoron.  Caesar was pretty good but he never faced major league pitching.  His  only really effective enemy in Gaul had been Vercingetorix, a chieftain of the Arverni whom he defeated only with great difficulty.  Do you think his account accurately portrays how he was often outsmarted by this barbarian?  Do you expect him to make a laughingstock of himself?  Of course not.  As another military genius, Winston Churchill, once said, “I expect history will treat me kindly because I propose to write it.”  Which he did to predicted effect.  Thus the author of three of the most disastrous military follies of the twentieth century, Gallipoli, Anzio and Dieppe, is remembered as the Lion of England.  Caesar was not nearly as inept as Churchill but still his is the only eye witness account we have which is why it is regarded as history instead of advertising.

Or take the Venerable Adam Bede.  In writing his Ecclesiastical History of the British Nation, he had no personal ax to grind.  He wasn’t running for Abbot of Jarrow which is a good thing because he couldn’t have been elected.  But knowing he was an employee of the direct descendants of the winners, do you for a moment think his account of the Synod of Whitby is a simple factual recitation?  Granted he was remarkably fair to Bishop Colman.  But do you really think the members of the Irish party, “…both high and low, signified their agreement and, abandoning their imperfect customs, hastened to adopt those which they had learned to be better?”  Do you think they capitulated to the absurd logic of Oswy’s decision?  They did none of these things.  Colman and most of his monks bowed to the inevitable and retreated to Iona.  He later founded monasteries in Mayo and Galway.  The Irish continued to resist Roman hegemony for five hundred years.  If you read Bede’s Preface with some understanding of the history, you cannot help but notice that all his sources were, like himself, members of the Roman party.  That should put you on notice:  either Bede was excessively credulous or he really did not know what the Romans had been up to.  His book is still invaluable but only if you read it with a grain or two of salt.

The point of all this is that truth is a seductive but coy mistress.  The reader is a sitting duck, the underdog in the transaction, an easy victim for an unscrupulous writer.  But that does not absolve readers from the obligation to manage their expectations.  You have a right to the truth or, more accurately, to what the writer sincerely believes is true.  And, unless you’re totally naïve, you should make allowances for error, honest and otherwise.  For example, Paul Samuelson, author of a classic introductory text in economics, really did think that supply and demand are the only important forces influencing prices.  But that is not an eternal verity;  it is an opinion supported by some data, some logic and a fair amount of ideology.  The latter particularly must be borne in mind and it is the reader’s job to do so.  All things considered, you are well advised not to form an opinion about evolution from reading the works of Pat Robertson.

There is a wide spectrum of writerly sins ranging from innocent trivia to heinous villainy.  Just where a particular sin falls on that spectrum depends on the importance of the deception and on the context.  In an academic or journalistic setting, plagiarism, however minor, is an unacceptable violation of the social contract.  In most other contexts, it tilts toward the trivial.  It is never morally laudable but let’s be careful and reasonable.  If I lift 50 words from the work of another writer, it’s okay as long as I acknowledge it.  So what The Times is complaining about is the lack of notice and the world is not going to end if I fail to note my borrowing of some words.  (It is, by the way, perfectly acceptable, to borrow freely when it comes to ideas.  Just be sure to rephrase them.)

Plagiarism happens.  But aside from the sophomore who borrows 1,500 words from the encyclopedia to write a term paper on the Docetist heresy, most of it is quite minor and probably inadvertent.  The idea that an author like Stephen Ambrose or Doris Kearns Goodwin, both former targets of The Times’ Page One wrath, would deliberately steal somebody else’s work has a probability approaching zero.  So if you do find a couple of hundred words that seem plagiarized, the natural assumption is that it is a mistake.  It is certainly not front page news and should never be treated as a gotcha.  I’m not so sure I see much of a difference between splashing a condemnation for plagiarism across the front page and forcing Hester Prynne to wear the scarlet letter A.  When you’ve been indicted, tried and convicted of what the newspaper of record considers a crime against humanity, it’s sure to follow you all the way to your obituary.  As a matter of fact, Doris Goodwin’s alleged sins were reprised in The Times’ obituary of Stephen Ambrose.  The poor woman can’t catch a break from the paper’s relentless pursuit.

People, present company excluded, do stupid things.  Even brilliant people.  It may be the arrogance of the common pickpocket:  they’ll never catch me because I’m too smart.  It may be a sense of entitlement or a symptom of narcissism.  It bears repeating that plagiarism is never justified and, in some few instances, it is a slap in the face to the core values of an institution in which case it can take on a bit of the flavor of treason.  But the obsession of The Times has long since taken on a bit of the flavor of a witch hunt and more than a bit of yellow journalism.  It’s an epidemic.  Every day it seems, there are examples of lesser offenders whose misdeeds are greatly amplified by the media.  I think of Abe Fortas, Pete Rose, Michael Milken, Tonya Harding and especially Richard Milhous Nixon.  Nixon’s sins were many but venial.  His achievements were monumental but virtually ignored.  To The Times and the Washington Post, he was a whipping boy and they piled on him and the others with glee as living proof of their own moral superiority.  The nadir of their sanctimonious posturing was, of course, the Monicagate fiasco during which they took every opportunity to reprise in excruciating detail the adolescent pornographic fantasies of Kenneth Starr and Henry Hyde.  In this sense, plagiarism is merely a subset of the syndrome of building journalistic mountains out of molehills.

As any five year old will be happy to tell you, it’s a free country and The Times will add that the First Amendment is sacred juju.  Which it is.  On the other hand, ginning up circulation through sensationalism and indulging in character assassination are hardly textbook examples of distinguished journalism.  Editors and publishers might bear in mind that the co-inventor of yellow journalism was none other than Joseph Pulitzer who also created the eponymous prizes for journalistic excellence.  Which is rapidly becoming extinct.