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The NY Times Plagiarism Expert Steals Its Thunder, and Public Trust in the Media Plummets Further

Brad Slager
Brad Slager  |  Oct 17, 2024
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Stealth Story Evolution – NEW YORK TIMES

  • We notice this update from their source is getting nary the promotion as the defense of Kamala.

The big breaking story this week was Kamala Harris was found to have plagiarized sections of her book published in 2020. The New York Times, as we covered, came out in defense against the accusation, bringing in its own plagiarism expert to refute the charge.

As we said on Tuesday, the expert, Jonathan Bailey, was given hand-selected examples to analyze and concluded those were benign and not traditionally regarded as plagiarism. 

After responses to this were less than glowing, Bailey has come out with a reassessment of things. Sort of. He now declares – after reading through all of the examples – that there was, in fact, plagiarism committed by Harris. But he also tries to thread the needle to maintain his media credibility:

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When reviewing allegations in a work, I try to understand how it was written. The idea is to determine whether it was an example of an honest mistake, sloppy work/writing or deliberate plagiarism. This case has a pattern that is similar to the second category. Though some of the passages, such as the Wikipedia one, are sloppy to the point of negligence, when you look at the portion of the book involved, the nature of the issues, and the citations provided, negligence remains more likely than malice in my eyes.

DNC PR Firm – NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO

Not to suggest that NPR is acting petty or behaving like elitists, it is just curious that a broadcast would play clips of an interview and you do not actually hear the questions asked of the responding individual. On "Morning Edition," it covered the Kamala Harris interview on Fox News and featured some of her responses. Amusingly, we never get treated to the questions and hear no audio whatsoever from Bret Baier.

Pre-Written Field Reports – POLITICO

We have been delivered another dose of doom promises from the press on what could play out if Donald Trump is elected. However, if they thought this was supposed to make voters anxious, that was a significant miscalculation.

POLITICO delivers a scenario that is more than likely to energize people to vote FOR Trump than scare people away. We are to learn that a raft of federal workers are nervous that they could be out of work should Donald Trump return to the White House. (Consider this "nightmare scenario" to be an in-kind donation to the Trump campaign.)

Reporting on the Mirror – THE INDUSTRY

  • Do you guys want to maybe fix things, or will we just go on and ignore this result as well?

One of the things we have always intended with this column, as well as on the "Lie-Able Sources Podcast," is to bring corrective action to the journalism industry. We not only enjoy eviscerating the condescending and lying newsmakers and outlets, but we also want to see a return to solid and ethical journalism.

So far, our efforts have not produced a crop. The Gallup Polling Group has released its annual assessment of public opinion about the news media, and amazingly, yet not surprisingly, things have become even worse. Not only has the press fallen to the bottom of the ten rated political/civic institutions, but for the third straight year, trust in the media has fallen below those who harbor ZERO trust in the press. 

Gallup offered four responses on the opinion about the media, and even when combining Great Deal/Fair Amount (31%), that still fell below Not Very Much (33%) and None At All (36%).

Demo-lition Project – ABC NEWS

One of the stops in the recent Kamala Harris media blitz was her sitting in with the cackling hens on "The View." She did not exactly come away with glowing reviews (seriously, does anyone recall a soundbite from the appearance?). But there is the tout going around that her visit generated the biggest audience the show has experienced in 3.5 years. 

But lest we get excited about some sort of stratospheric figure achieved by her appearance, the 3.143 million audience figure is lower than the daily average of "The View" and pales compared to the 7.1 million Bret Baier drew on Wednesday.

BlueAnon – MSNBC

  • Just magnificent content.

Joy Reid, everyone. No commentary needed…just "Joy Reid."

There will be camps. There will be Project 2025. There could be arrests of people like Adam Schiff, there could be Nancy Pelosi being hauled off to jail. If you don’t think that’s possible, then you really don’t understand that there is no American exceptionalism. If Kamala Harris does not win, it is not clear there will be another election. Those are the stakes, unfortunately.