Wash Times’ ‘Quote Heist’

If you’re going to copy from someone, copy from the best, right? Lynn Sweet, one of the hardest working journalists on the Hill, found an article very similar to hers in Friday’s Washington Times. “Call the journalism police. It’s a quote heist,” she blogged.

Eric Pfeffier, who wrote the National Review’s Beltway Buzz and recently started at the Washington Times (with a brief stop at Wonkette), managed to quote the Daily Kos founder as well as Senator Trent Lott, and describe Obama’s office in great detail without ever figuring out any of that himself.

Pfeiffer’s stuff came from Sweet’s January 22nd piece on the Illinois wunderkind. He says “he believes he ‘intended’ to credit the Sun-Times ‘and I didn’t. I guess it’s a fairly weak excuse, but it’s an honest one.’”

Times Managing Editor Francis Coombs tells Kurtz today that Pfeiffer “acknowledged a stupid mistake. Needless to say, that’s correct.” Kurtz reports, “The paper ran a correction Saturday, and Coombs said the editors will review Pfeiffer’s other stories before deciding what action to take.”

Now one of the several questions here: It certainly would be acceptable to use others’ reporting if you couldn’t track down the information yourself, but to not even contact Obama’s office in the first place seems to be highly dubious.

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