Some examples of plagiarism by Wheeling papers

Recently, in editorials

In the last month, the Wheeling Intelligencer printed two plagiarized editorials. Most recently, on October 4, the Intelligencer published an editorial on Ohio’s prisons. Over half of the editorial is word-for-word from an AP news report. (See here). On September 29, 40% of another Intelligencer editorial was plagiarized from an AP source. I wrote about it here.

In news stories

In December 2019, the local papers printed, without any attribution, two long word-for-word paragraphs from the Washington Post’s Bishop Bransfield story as part of its own coverage.

Printing others’ plagiarism

Plagiarism checkers have been around for over twenty years. You can find a number of excellent ones online. They are quick and effective. Some are free but even the “industrial strength” ones are quite inexpensive, and they work; it takes seconds to run an article, opinion piece, or editorial through the checker and the results will include links to suspicious similarities.

Here are a couple of examples that could have used a plagiarism check:

In May of 2019, the Charleston Gazette-Mail’s Ryan Quinn highlighted a column by WV Senate Education Chair Patricia Rucker in which numerous sentences in her op-ed on charter schools appeared to have beeen taken word-for-word from a pro-charter school website. When confronted, Rucker called it an “incredible coincidence.” Not only did the Intelligencer and News-Register not cover the likely plagiarism, the Sunday News-Register then published Rucker’s op-ed as it was originally. (See here).

For a number of years, the Intelligencer used feature articles by Carrie White. On a number of occasions, White’s columns consisted of cut-and-pasted plagiarized material. See here and here, for examples.

In November 2017, the Sunday News-Register printed an op-ed by Gil White, who was the state director for the National Federation of Independent Business. In the process of trying to find out when the piece had been first published, I discovered that the exact same op-ed had appeared in other states but with a different author listed. Somebody had clearly plagiarized. (I wrote about it here.)

A month later, Media Matters carried a piece about how large corporations were getting friendly op-eds placed in newspapers without revealing their corporate connections. I contacted Media Matters about the White piece and they did a follow-up article that noted how the same NFIB-originated op-ed was placed in various papers but with different state chairs as the author. Our local paper’s editor was quoted in reporter Eric Hananoki’s post:

Mike Myer, executive editor at The Intelligencer, said that they "were not aware the same language was used by other authors. Had we known, we would have requested a change or, at the very least, noted similar or the same language was used elsewhere by other authors.”

(I wrote about it here).

Hey, Wheeling News-Register: “plagiarism is plagiarism.” How difficult would it have been for an editor to have run any of the above through a plagiarism checker? Yes, it would have been quick and easy but that assumes that the paper cares about plagiarism. It doesn’t; it only cares about filling newspaper space. Like Ogden’s editorials that praise itself for its “fair and balanced” news coverage while the opposite is so often the case, this editorial, under its supposed concern for West Liberty University, hides the locals’ unwillingness to deal with its own plagiarism issues.

I trust West Liberty will assemble the facts and work this out. Regardless, it certainly doesn’t need help from a “newspaper” with its own unacknowledged plagiarism history.