Ann Coulter

Coulter a Cribber? Company: No. Expert: Yuh-huh.

Justin Rood | July 10, 2006, 6:49PM

Editor & Publisher reports:

Universal Press Syndicate said today that it doesn't think controversial columnist Ann Coulter is guilty of plagiarism.

When reached for reaction to Universal's statement, the head of the company the New York Post asked to investigate the alleged plagiarism said of some of Coulter's work: "It is uncited, it is unoriginal, and it does look like plagiarism." But iParadigms CEO John Barrie emphasized that it's up to Coulter's syndicate and book publisher to accept or ignore his company's findings. "Our technology is not designed to make those judgment calls," he said of the iThenticate system.

n a statement sent to E&P, Universal President and Editor Lee Salem said: "Last week a software program company official ran Ann Coulter's columns through a 'match-text' program, frequently used by teachers to detect original work. . . .

"Like her book publisher, Crown, Universal Press Syndicate finds no merits to the allegations of plagiarism brought by the software company executive. There are only so many ways you can rewrite a fact and minimal matching text is not plagiarism. "

. . . .

Barrie told E&P that Coulter's work might have been more a case of "textbook plagiarism" than some other writers -- including Michael Olesker of The Sun in Baltimore -- who lost their jobs amid plagiarism charges. "It's definitely not any less serious than Michael Olesker's situation," he said.

Ann Coulter

Coulter Syndicator to Respond to Plagiarism Allegations Next Week

Justin Rood | July 8, 2006, 5:48PM

Universal Press Syndicate, which distributes Ann Coulter's columns to over 100 newspapers, told AP it was review her work and expected to have a "response" to recent plagiarism allegations next week. That's good to know; UPS spokeswoman Kathie Kerr has not returned my phone calls or emails since Thursday.

Meanwhile, Coulter's book publisher, Crown Forum -- a division of Random House, itself a division of multinational publishing giant Bertelsmann AG -- issued a statement which appears to defend their bestselling author. Crown vice president Steve Ross said the allegations were "as trivial and meritless as they are irresponsible.”

Coulter -- who had earlier made vituperative comments in reaction to the charges, but did not deny them -- "was not immediately available for comment Friday," the AP reports.

Ann Coulter

Update: Addition to Coulter Plagiarism Allegations List

Justin Rood | July 7, 2006, 4:58PM

We've added an allegation to our "Complete" List of Ann Coulter Plagiarism Allegations: A list of "successful treatments achieved by adult stem cell research" in her book, "Godless," appears to have been previously published on a pro-life organization's Web site.

The allegation was made by the Raw Story Web site in June.

Ann Coulter

"Complete" List of Coulter Plagiarism Allegations

Justin Rood | July 7, 2006, 10:45AM

Behold, the list.

Since we started covering the plagiarism accusations leveled at Ann Coulter, a number of readers have asked to see the alleged examples firsthand. So we have tried to compile all known examples of plagiarism that have been alleged to be in Ann Coulter's work.

This list does not include instances of factual distortion or wrongly-cited material. The following list focuses on those examples, identified by the New York Post and others, in which it appears Coulter has, without attribution, used another writer's words, or a substantial portion of another person's unique research.

Another challenge: some alleged examples of plagiarism cited conflicting source material. For instance, some of the outlandish NEA grant recipients Coulter mentioned in a 2005 column had been listed in a 1993 article by someone else, but that article appears to have been based on a 1991 Heritage Foundation document. In these cases, we have opted to reference the earliest known version of the work, assuming it would be the original.

To be clear, none of the examples shown below were discovered by TPMmuckraker.com. They were identified by the blogger Rude Pundit, Raw Story, plagiarism expert John Barrie and the New York Post, writer David Chapman and the Boston Globe. In each case, after the alleged example of plagiarism we've noted the party who originally identified the similar or identical passages. In this list we're not making any judgments. We're putting the textual evidence before you. You decide.

We'd like to keep this list as complete as possible, so if there are other examples not included, please let us know.

Read more »

Ann Coulter

Coulter Plagiarism Story Picks Up Steam

Justin Rood | July 6, 2006, 8:17PM

Is the Ann Coulter plagiarism story shifting from a one-day spark into a days-long saga?

Interest appears to be growing. John Barrie, the man whose technology identified the instances of plagiarism in acidic right-wing writer Ann Coulter's columns, is getting more calls to do national television.

Barrie, whose analysis of Coulter's work was first reported by the New York Post on Sunday, has recently been contacted by the Today Show and Good Morning America, he told me. In addition, AP, the New York Times and others have called him for stories they're working on, and the New York Post is planning a follow-up piece, he said.

"It's picking up," Barrie told me this afternoon.

Meanwhile, Universal Press Syndicate, which distributes Ann Coulter's caustic columns to over 100 newspapers nationwide, says they might use two different tools to audit Coulter's past columns, in light of the recent allegations.

So they're telling Editor & Publisher, anyway. UPS spokeswoman Kathie Kerr has yet to respond to my email this afternoon asking for an update on the matter.

E&P reports:

"We'll see what we can find on our own," said Kathie Kerr, the syndicate's director of communications, noting that Universal would use the information referenced in Sunday's New York Post article. . . .

The Universal spokeswoman said. . . she did hear from a sales-division person at the iParadigms company with which [John] Barrie is affiliated. Kerr said she was told that iParadigms wasn't sure if it "could provide the same information about Coulter as was given to the Post," but that the syndicate "could subscribe to the service that provided the information" to that newspaper.

"This tool is a service sold through subscription on LexisNexis," said Kerr. "We use the research tool on LexisNexis quite a bit. The plagiarism tool is called Copyguard and is about a year old. We'll want to set up a trial period and of course get pricing on this tool, but it sounds like something that would benefit us. I don't know how long it will take to get a trial period set up."

"From what I'm told, they were very, very eager to talk terms with LexisNexis," Barry told me.

Ann Coulter

Plagiarism Claims Against Coulter Stretch Back Nearly Five Years

Justin Rood | July 6, 2006, 2:56PM

It turns out that charges plagiarism against Ann Coulter have been around since 2001. From a Boston Globe article dated Oct. 18, 2001, on Coulter's book, "High Crimes and Misdemeanors":

Michael Chapman, formerly a colleague of Coulter's at the conservative weekly Human Events. . . . complained to his bosses that a lot of his original research and reporting [for an earlier supplement, later cancelled] ended up in Coulter's book. In several instances, he wrote, his work was reproduced verbatim, paraphrased, or slightly rewritten, but never acknowledged. . . . Let's take a look.

Chapman, "A Case for Impeachment," page 13: "Four Democratic fundraisers have stated that former DNC Finance Chairman Marvin Rosen explicitly advocated selling access to the President. . ."

Coulter, page 219: "At least four Democratic fund-raising officials have revealed that former DNC Finance Chairman Marvin Rosen explicitly advocated selling access to the president . . ."

Read more »

Ann Coulter

Coulter Syndication Co. Still Waiting for Callback

Justin Rood | July 6, 2006, 12:53PM

I just got an email from Kathie Kerr, spokeswoman for Universal Press Syndicate, which distributes Ann Coulter's columns to newspapers around the United States. She said yesterday she was requesting a "report" from John Barrie, the plagiarism expert whose technology has reportedly identified numerous examples of the columnist's cribbing.

John called me back last night. But Universal Press Syndicate hasn't heard from him, Kerr wrote.

"Universal Press has left two messages for Dr. Barrie. . . but he has not returned our calls, as of yet," she emailed.

Barrie told me last night he wasn't going to give them his research for free -- they could buy his entire service, and verify that none of their authors are plagiarists, or they could take nothing and like it. For Coulter, the results of his findings have already been published, he said.

TPMmuckraker is busy compiling a list of alleged examples of plagiarism in Coulter's work which have been reported elsewhere, including Barrie's examples cited by the New York Post. We hope to have it up shortly.

Ann Coulter

Plagiarism Expert: "If I Never Read Coulter Again, It Will Be Too Soon"

Justin Rood | July 6, 2006, 8:48AM

I talked to John Barrie, the plagiarism expert the New York Post relied on to identify Ann Coulter's stolen allegedly passages, fresh off his MSNBC appearance last night.

He told me the paper had approached him with Coulter's book after she appeared on Larry King to discuss her comments about 9/11 widows -- having called them "witches" and saying "I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much" in her latest book.

"The next day, [NYPost reporter] Philip Recchia called me and said, Ann Coulter's book. . . let's run that through," Barrie told me. But his company does its analysis by computer, so the book had to be scanned into a digital format. "The New York Post, at their expense, OCR'd every damn page of that book.

"Oh, my God, how long is that book?" Barrie added. "By the way, if I never read Ann Coulter again, it will be too soon."

The paper also scanned in the last 12 months of Coulter's columns for Barrie to analyze.

It didn't take long to find evidence of plagiarism, Barrie said. "After we found three in the book, we called it quits. I think we found four of her syndicated columns that had problems." But the task proved draining, he said -- on himself, not his technology. "After combing through Ann Coulter for a while, it doesn't take long before you want to call it quits. I want to prove the technology, but I don't want to make my eyes bleed."

Barrie confirmed that Universal Press Syndicate, which distributes Coulter's columns to over 100 newspapers around the country, called him twice yesterday. UPS' Kathie Kerr had told me yesterday that they want to review a copy of Barries "report" before making a comment.

But Barrie says he won't be sharing anything with UPS unless they sign up to use his technology. "When I talk to them tomorrow, I will tell them we'll be happy to share these results with you, as soon as you buy this service."

For the purpose of reviewing these most recent charges of plagiarism, Barrie said both the Post and MSNBC have run the examples themselves, which UPS can match up on their own.

Ann Coulter

Coulter: NY Post is Big Apple's "Second-Crappiest Paper"

Justin Rood | July 5, 2006, 9:36PM

Ann Coulter unleashed her trademark venom at the New York Post today, after the tabloid reported the caustic opinionatrix had plagiarized content for her columns. ("The Post has been reduced to tabloid status," Coulter charged.)

"Maybe the Post's constant harassment of me is an attempt to shake me down for protection money like they did with billionaire businessman Ron Burkle. I have sold a LOT of books -- more books, come to think of it, than any writers at the New York Post," Coulter said.

Careful readers will note that within the venom, a denial is nowhere to be found.

Ann Coulter

Update: Company to Probe Coulter Plagiarism Charges

Justin Rood | July 5, 2006, 2:35PM

I heard back from Universal Press Syndicate's Kathie Kerr. Her company distributes Ann Coulter's column to over 100 newspapers around the country -- columns which, according to recent news, may have contained plagiarized material.

I had asked Kerr earlier this morning whether her company was taking any action in response to these published claims.

In an email, Kerr thanked me for bringing the assertions to UPS's attention, and asked me to get a copy of the report to them. "If Mr. Barrie would be so kind to send Lee Salem, President and Editor of Universal Press Syndicate his report, we will be happy to review it. Until we do, there's little we can say about it," she wrote me. John Barrie was the New York Post's expert source who claimed to have identified Coulter's plagiarized passages.

In my reply, I explained to Kerr that Barrie had been quoted not by me but by the New York Post, and perhaps that paper would be a good source of information. Kerr replied: "we have no contact information."

A few minutes later, however, Ms. Kerr located Barrie's contact information on the Web and said she would try to call him herself. Moments later, another email from Ms. Kerr arrived: "I've left Mr. Barrie a message."

Sounds like the Coulter plagiarism investigation is off to a flying start. I've put in a call myself to Mr. Barrie, and am waiting to hear back. I'll let you know what I find out.

Ann Coulter

Coulter Gets a Pass on Plagiarism?

Justin Rood | July 5, 2006, 11:10AM

The New York Post Sunday was the first print media to report that arch-conservative provocateuse Ann Coulter appears to have plagiarized -- repeatedly -- other writers in her books and columns. However, it's not clear she's going to suffer for it.

Others have been chasing this online for some time. But it was refreshing to see a newspaper pick up the story.

So what happens when a columnist is found using other's words without attribution? I called Universal Press Syndicate, which distributes Coulter's column to over 100 newspapers.

What's the story? I asked Kathie Kerr, the company's media relations chief. Is your company considering any action against Coulter? Will there be any fallout? "I think [Coulter] is the one that needs to address this," Kerr told me at first.

I noted that in other plagiarism cases -- Jayson Blair, for instance -- the response was not left up to the writer. Indeed, in that case the New York Times and its editors bore responsibility for his misdeeds.

"After the investigation is complete and the allegations are proven correct, that's right," she told me.

So is there an investigation into Coulter's writings? "Not that I know of," Kerr replied. She promised to get in touch with Coulter's editor and call me back.

Also, Kerr told me that so far, none of the papers carrying Coulter's column have called to complain about the plagiarism, or to drop the feature.