Monday, June 14, 2004

Opinion Articles Aren't Always What They Seem For the second time this year, The Hartford Courant's op-ed department has found it necessary to apologize for not catching what appeared to be something like plagiarism in its own pages -- by someone in a usually trustworthy position. What it actually caught, however, has been common practice in the public relations business. A few months ago, after the mutual embarrassment of finding that a university president could be at least as sloppy as an undergraduate in converting research notes to a bylined article, the Courant enlisted the help of a plagiarism-prevention service to double-check submissions for the op-ed page. (And the university president took an early retirement.) In the new case this month, Carolyn Lumsden, the paper's commentary editor, confesses that she didn't bother to use that new plagiarism detection program on the offending submission -- and didn't notice that, in retrospect, "the writing was too smooth for a nonprofessional." A nonprofessional writer that is. The op-ed piece in question was signed by another trusted professional -- a local chief of police down on the Connecticut shoreline. In her apologetic article, "There Ought To Be A Law Against This Shady Practice," Lumsden put it this way: You don't expect a police chief to fool you. A used-car salesman, perhaps. You arm yourself with an internal fraud detector when you're buying a car. But a police chief who has served his town for decades? That's not really a dig at used-car salesmen: One of them runs the computer discussion board that blew the whistle on the chief's op-ed. The resultant discussion also included links to Washington Post and other items on the general issue of deceptive authorship of op-eds. The Courant's flawed op-ed, which ran last month and is gone now from the Courant website (http://ctnow.com), was about the impact of Homeland Security demands on municipal police budgets. "The chief appeared well-credentialed to write on this subject as chairman of the legislative committee of the International Association of Chiefs of Police," Lumsden wrote. However, after she was alerted to similarities between the column and a piece in that police association's magazine, The Police Chief, Lumsden confirmed that the Connecticut town chief's article seemed to be a canned "sample op-ed." It appears on the IACP site as a column by its president, but also in a more generic form with a blank at the top for "By Chief (Insert Name)" and another at the bottom marked, "(Insert Name) is chief of police in (Insert City/State)." "I never thought to ask whether he wrote it himself," Lumsden wrote, adding that even after being confronted with the similarities in the articles, the chief insisted that he played a major role in writing the essay for the association. (A quick Google search uncovers the same article, under the byline of a New York chief on his state chief's association website, as well as the version by the California chief who heads the national organization.) "To pass off another person's work as your own is a journalistic sin of the highest order. It ought to be a crime," Lumsden wrote. "For a group of law enforcement officials, the IACP is curiously unabashed about such dishonesty." The problem may be that other op-ed editors don't have the Courant's standards, or simply haven't been caught letting local advocates of one issue or another get away with using canned propaganda from national advocacy groups for years. Another quick Google search (for "op-ed model" "op-ed template" or "sample op-ed") uncovered canned opinion pieces distributed by not only PR firms for the nuclear industry lobby, but such organizations as the American Library Association, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the National Safety Council's Click it or ticket campaign), the Unitarian Univeralist Society, and a national education group that finished its "sample op-ed" with a helpful reminder to "Provide name of author, title, organization, and a one-line description of your organization or interest group." In the euphemism-enriched public relations trade, this is known as "providing template language." Thanks to the recent controversy over that nuclear power op-ed, PR practitioner Dan Keeney became concerned enough to warn his colleagues and clients that, "If your organization provides template language for op-eds or letters to the editor, you could be vulnerable to attack and may be endangering the reputation of those who agree to submit the pieces under their byline. And you may threaten the reputation of your organization as well." He also found an anti-nuke organization using the same tactics. The real story, he says, is not about one propaganda campaign or another, but "how public engagement and grassroots mobilization initiatives have institutionalized the practice of adopting a standard set of thoughts, words, sentences and paragraphs in the pursuit of spreading a message. In so doing, this mass communication approach completely overlooked the fact that its foundation is built upon the practice of plagiarism." Students of writing style will note that only the "initiatives" and their "approach" are guilty of anything. I like the phrase "grassroots mobilization initiatives," which less enthusiastic observers might see as approaching "astroturf" -- giving the impression that there's a movement, even if there is just an office somewhere cranking out "templates" to be signed, rewritten a little (maybe), and sent to less vigilant op-ed editors. We've all seen "grassroots" e-mail form-letter "write your congressman" campaigns and Amnesty International letter-drives. The idea is to fill the recipient's mailbox with often identical letters, all in a good cause. I've joined a few of the online "click here and we'll send a letter to Washington" campaigns myself, and felt more like I was signing a petition than putting my signature on something I hadn't written. Maybe I was wrong to do that, even in a form-letter-savvy culture. Call me a mouse-button liberal, the modern form of the old knee-jerk liberal. However, putting your name on an op-ed piece or letter to the editor intended for publication should be something more personal than a "me too" mass mailing. I notice that the Harvard Crimson accepts op-ed submissions online, but asks a user to check "sole author" or "co-author" on a "content submission contract" form. If it asked for the co-author's identity, I'd call that an even better start. 4:19:33 PM    comment []

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