Author Topic: CNN’S HIT JOB ON MONICA CROWLEY (An expert weighs in on the “plagiarism” allegations)  (Read 4357 times)

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Offline SirLinksALot

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SOURCE: FRONTPAGE

URL: http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/265529/cnns-hit-job-monica-crowley-matthew-vadum

by Matthew Vadum



The plagiarism allegations CNN leveled against conservative commentator Monica Crowley were part of a “political hit job,” according to a publishing law attorney with expertise in plagiarism cases.

Crowley, a popular TV pundit and Washington Times editor who holds a Ph.D. in international relations, previously worked for former President Richard Nixon years after he resigned his office.

Trump's transition team stood by Crowley when the controversy erupted, stating, "Any attempt to discredit Monica is nothing more than a politically motivated attack that seeks to distract from the real issues facing this country."

Crowley has suffered mightily because of the allegations. President-elect Donald Trump had asked her to become a national security spokeswoman but she backed out of the job offer. Her publisher has withdrawn one of her books, and critics of Crowley have raised the possibility that Columbia University could revoke her doctoral degree. The university hasn’t weighed in on the matter publicly.

It is significant that CNN’s smear vehicle is written by Andrew Kaczynski, formerly of BuzzFeed, the cat video-loving so-called media outlet run by Ben Smith, a gossip-loving left-wing former Politico reporter. Kaczynski quit BuzzFeed to join CNN in October.

The attorney who has weighed in on this case is Lynn Chu, a member of the New York State Bar who earned her juris doctor degree from the University of Chicago in 1982.

In a report this week about Crowley’s alleged plagiarism, Chu establishes her expertise by explaining that she has “over 30 years of experience in the field of publishing and publishing law.” She notes that she has “often reviewed literary materials with an eye to issues of quality and … [is] well familiar with sourcing and attribution standards in both university press and commercial publishing.”

Chu said she looked at Crowley's work and "found CNN's splashy 'plagiarism' accusation to be ill-supported—a heavily exaggerated, political hit job."

The "CNN list [or plagiarized passages] was misleadingly long, possibly a calculated attempt to condemn her with manufactured, but false, bulk."

Chu also revealed that CNN had deliberately misrepresented evidence. In two dozen of the supposed examples of plagiarism cited by the cable TV network, "CNN hid from readers that her footnotes gave proper credit to the source," she said.

"I came away impressed by the very high quality and care taken by Ms. Crowley in her writing, scholarship and research overall," Chu said. There were "relatively few examples of unsourced copying” that should simply “be corrected, and not allowed to besmirch Ms. Crowley's reputation."

At first glance, the case CNN’s Kaczynski makes against Crowley in his Jan. 7 article seems damning.

Kaczynski writes:

Quote
The review of Crowley’s June 2012 book, "What The (Bleep) Just Happened," found upwards of 50 examples of plagiarism from numerous sources, including the copying with minor changes of news articles, other columnists, think tanks, and Wikipedia. The New York Times bestseller, published by the HarperCollins imprint Broadside Books, contains no notes or bibliography.

He continues:

Quote
Sections of her book are repeatedly lifted from articles by National Review author Andrew C. McCarthy, who is a friend of Crowley’s. Lines in her book also match word-for-word the work of other columnists, including National Review’s Rich Lowry, Michelle Malkin, conservative economist Stephen Moore, Karl Rove, and Ramesh Ponnuru of Bloomberg View.

Crowley also lifted word-for-word phrases from the Associated Press, the New York Times, Politico, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, the BBC, and Yahoo News.

But closer examination reveals Kaczynski to be at best a hairsplitter, and at worst, a liar.

Let’s take a look at some of Kaczynski’s typical headache-inducing complaints.

On page 82 of Crowley’s book, she writes (boldfacing here indicates words highlighted in Kaczynski’s article)

Quote
The FDR Keynesians’ defiance of the basic rules of economics led to such absurdities as the New Deal decision to pay farmers to burn their crops and slaughter their livestock to maintain high food prices.

According to CNN, the above paragraph was lifted from an article commentator Steve Moore wrote in the Wall Street Journal in 2011. Moore reportedly wrote:

Quote
Over the years, this has led to some horrific blunders, such as the New Deal decision to pay farmers to burn crops and slaughter livestock to  keep food prices high: To encourage food production, destroy it.

Yes, there appears to be a regurgitation of the phrase “as the New Deal decision to pay farmers to burn crops and slaughter…” but how else could she have explained the New Deal era policy? Should she have elongated it along the lines of perhaps “as the New Deal era policy of providing subsidies to farmers to destroy crops and slaughter livestock mandated…”? There are only so many ways to explain paying farmers to destroy what they produce.

It’s not as if she was stealing Moore’s unique intellectual property. She was explaining a concept economically as a good writer should. If she’d changed a word or two in the above phrase would that have let her off the hook in Kaczynski’s view? Don’t count on it.

CNN refers to Crowley’s book in regards to pages 256 and 257:.

Quote
So much for not targeting the United States. Al-Badi, like the Iranian mullahs, went on to say that America was in irreversible decline and therefore ripe for jihad. In fact, the Brotherhood has always supported the use of violence when it would advance Islamism; it only tactically renounced violence against the Egyptian government because it knew Mubarak would have come down on them like a brick house and because they were advancing the Islamist agenda through the system anyway.

CNN compares the sentences to something Andrew McCarthy wrote in National Review in 2011:

Quote
As I have repeatedly pointed out — and as Barry Rubin argues in this excellent analysis of the new Obama policy — the Brotherhood has always favored violence where it would advance the Islamist cause; it tactically renounced violence against the Egyptian regime because it would have prompted ruinous retaliation from Mubarak and because the Brotherhood was making progress through the political process and influence over Egyptian institutions.

Claiming the above example constitutes plagiarism is ridiculous. The concepts and some of the words overlap but the ideas expressed are not all the same. Crowley refers to Al-Badi and his assessment of America as a target; McCarthy doesn’t even mention Al-Badi or discuss the views he expressed.

CNN produces a near-exact match when it refers to page 230 of Crowley’s book:

Quote
In December 2007 CIA director Michael Hayden stated that “of about 100 prisoners held to date in the CIA program, the enhanced techniques were used on about 30, and waterboarding used on just three.”

The Wikipedia entry, CNN claimed is exactly the same except for a superfluous period at the end.

In December 2007 CIA director Michael Hayden stated that "of about 100 prisoners held to date in the CIA program, the enhanced techniques were used on about 30, and waterboarding used on just three.".

Amazingly, some people consider copying from Wikipedia to be plagiarism. It is an open-source encyclopedia whose entries on controversial political matters are zealously guarded by social justice warriors who prefer “wikilawyering” and using their sheer numbers to prevail in edit wars. Copying from Wikipedia is often like writing down graffiti from bathroom stalls in nightclubs. No one knows if the graffiti is factually accurate or what the motives were of the vandal.

For all we know someone may have set Crowley up, changing the article to match the wording she used in her book. If Crowley really did copy from Wikipedia, she shouldn’t have, but to call such a deed plagiarism is harsh.

Most of CNN’s complaints are closer to the New Deal and Egyptian examples higher up in this article.

Chu said that she “judged each item in context for what was appropriate, what was in error, the degree of error, and whether and how it needed be corrected,” and that she arrived at her “overall conclusions mindful of the totality.”

In Chu’s opinion there were "relatively few examples of unsourced copying.”

She added, “The term ‘plagiarism’ should not be used until errors reach a critical mass.” Some errors are to be expected in any lengthy work, she said.

In other words, it isn’t plagiarism.

BuzzFeed has been targeting Republicans and conservatives for destruction for some time.

BuzzFeed performed a colossal belly flop earlier this month when it ran an unverified, hard-to-believe story not only that Donald Trump had intelligence links to Russia but also a fondness for sex acts involving urine. According to almost certainly fabricated Russian documents, the FSB, successor intelligence agency to the KGB, had evidence that when in Moscow Trump had rented a hotel room the Obamas had previously occupied and hired prostitutes to perform a “golden showers” routine on the bed on which the Obamas had slept.

It’s the kind of tabloid trash for which BuzzFeed has become known. CNN, where, again, Kaczynski now works, enthusiastically promoted the fake news story originating from his previous employer. CNN also played a significant role in pushing the debunked lie started by NBC’s Katy Tur that Trump asked Russia to hack computer systems in order to defeat his opponent Hillary Clinton.

Understandably, Trump has blasted CNN for its unfair coverage of him.

Last week at Trump’s first formal press conference as president-elect, he pointedly refused to take a question from CNN reporter Jim Acosta and described the network as a purveyor of “fake news.” The media responded with feigned horror, conveniently forgetting how many times President Obama has publicly bashed Fox News and had his smear attempts backed up by the George Soros-funded fake media watchdog Media Matters for America.

This desperate assault on Monica Crowley is just the beginning.

The Left is digging in to hurt the Trump administration any way it can.
« Last Edit: January 22, 2017, 01:10:11 am by SirLinksALot »

Online Bigun

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CNN is NOT a news network!

It is a full time outlet for Communist agitprop!
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.

"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
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Offline endicom

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The Left is digging in to hurt the Trump administration any way it can.


My plagiarized response is, Yup!

Offline Hondo69

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SOURCE: FRONTPAGE

This desperate assault on Monica Crowley is just the beginning.

The Left is digging in to hurt the Trump administration any way it can.

It's sad to watch CNN sink deeper and deeper into the abyss.  But its obvious to many they have been way past the point of no return for several years now. 

I've made the case for a long time now that the Republicans should go out of their way to single out CNN and beat them like a drum several times a day.  Make them the whipping boy and hammer them into the ground until there's nothing left.  My reasons are as follows.

For one, CNN is viewed by a certain segment of the population as being relatively evenly balanced.  These people don't know any better for the simple reason it has been a rare occasion when a Republican has stood up to their abuse.  If no one ever questions their bona fides then that segment of the population will never think twice about CNN's credibility.  By hammering CNN early and often it will at a very minimum raise the question in a few people's minds they just might be fake news.

Secondly, it is a mistake to whine about the media in a general sense.  The term "the media" is like a puff of smoke no one can really wrap their arms around except in the most abstract way.  It's a bit like tilting at windmills.  Yet by singling out CNN as a specific entity it provides a guidepost the public can grab onto.  The term "the media" is abstract, CNN is specific.

And putting them under the magnifying glass it serves the larger purpose.  Guilt by association.  People will wonder, "if CNN is fake news then what about MSNBC and all the others?"  It plants that critical seed of doubt.

Sadly its taken the Republicans decades to learn the lesson.  Blaming the media for anything has always been one of the third rails of politics to them.  It is interesting to watch them today as they slowly adjust to their newly installed backbone.

Offline Hondo69

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From time to time I scan the overseas papers.  They provide a perspective we don't normally get here in the U.S.

And over time a person gathers a general sense of which way the wind blows in the UK, Sweden, etc.  They also provide a glimpse into the future since U.S. politicians are hell-bent to copy the EU and other areas of the world going straight down the tubes.

The papers in the UK for example are essentially tabloids.  Scattered among the biking pics of movie stars on the beach are bits of news here and there.  You just have to search beyond the boobs to find it.  It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to see CNN going in the same direction.

Boobs On The 8's
CNN will offer in the future a topless model to stroll across the screen at :08, :18, :28, etc.  They'll have to work up to full frontal nudity bit by bit of course.  They'll have to start with something a little more tame first.


Offline sneakypete

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CNN is NOT a news network!

It is a full time outlet for Communist agitprop!

@Bigun

It has never been a news network. It is and has never been anything but an anti-American and pro-communist propaganda outlet posing as a news network.

I have bumper stickers that say "Is it REAL (bold and in red) news,or is it CNN News?" and "CNN,NOW 99 % FACT FREE!"

You might be surprised about how many people see them and smile,and the number that ask me where they can buy them. Most aren't even seniors,either. They have been people in their 20's and 30's. To tell the truth,that surprised me. I had been thinking it was only geezers like me that paid attention to the news.

Anyone who isn't paranoid in 2021 just isn't thinking clearly!

Offline sneakypete

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@Hondo69

Boobs On The 8's
CNN will offer in the future a topless model to stroll across the screen at :08, :18, :28, etc.  They'll have to work up to full frontal nudity bit by bit of course.  They'll have to start with something a little more tame first.



I don't know who she is,but I want her to be my friend.
Anyone who isn't paranoid in 2021 just isn't thinking clearly!