It appears that the New York Post, which doesn't think it needs to tell readers when one of its journalists plagiarizes, has followed up on allegations against Ann Coutler that were first raised by The Rude Pundit in early June. The Post reports that plagiarism detector iThenticate scanned her latest book and some of her syndicated columns and found several passages that appear to have been plagiarised. Editor & Publisher has a summary of the Post story, which carried the headline, "COPYCATTY COULTER PILFERS PROSE: PRO." Here are two Coulter columns that John Barrie, creator of iThenticate, says are suspect:
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.
We can't get a hold of the full Post story, but one can imagine that the cribbed book text identified by The Rude Pundit checked out when iThenticate went to work. "Just as Coulter plays free and loose with her citations in 'Godless,' she obviously does the same in her columns," Barrie told the Post. We'll add more as it becomes available. More from the story:
...John Barrie, the creator of a leading plagiarism-recognition system, claimed he found at least three instances of what he calls "textbook plagiarism" in the leggy blond pundit's "Godless: the Church of Liberalism" after he ran the book's text through the company's digital iThenticate program.
He also says he discovered verbatim lifts in Coulter's weekly column, which is syndicated to more than 100 newspapers, including the Fort Lauderdale (Fla.) Sun-Sentinel and Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle.
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...
