A Case of 'Accidental' Plagiarism

Erlanger: It was all an accident!

An editor's note in the New York Times yesterday demonstrates the lengths to which the Times will go out on a limb for its error-prone, biased Jerusalem bureau chief, Steven Erlanger.

It's not very long, so, what the heck, I'll run it in full:

An article in The Arts on Monday described the films of the Israeli director Amos Gitai, the subject of a retrospective by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. It included two paragraphs, about Mr. Gitai's background and goals, that were virtually identical to a passage in an article by Michael Z. Wise in the August issue of Travel + Leisure magazine.
The Times reporter, who had portions of the electronic version of Mr. Wise's article in his computer, inadvertently mingled them with his own notes from an interview with Mr. Gitai, and then used some of them in the Times article without attribution. The material from the magazine should have been credited to it.

Don't you hate it when that happens? Hell, how many times have you walked into Wal-Mart with a shopping bag from another store and "inadvertently mingled" stuff that you pick off the shelves? I mean, it's an "accident," right? Yet those meanie store detectives nab you in the parking lot and toss you in jail.

Fortunately, Steve works for the Times, where he is a good corporate soldier in the anti-Israel department, as we have noted here and here and here and here and here and.... gee, my wrist is starting to hurt. So it's good to see that the Times is isn't just turning a blind eye to his sloppy, biased reporting. Looks like thievery is OK as well, as evidenced by his being caught with his hand in the till and the Times acceping his "dog ate my homework" excuse.

Attaboy, Stevie! You got away with it again!