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Joel B. Pollak
The New York Times admitted Monday that Vice President Kamala Harris had plagiarized multiple passages in her 2009 book, Smart on Crime, but claimed that the copying was “not serious” and a small portion of the whole book.
The plagiarism was exposed by conservative journalist Christopher Rufo, based on research by Dr. Stefan Weber, a world-renowned Austrian expert on plagiarism.
The Times reported that the plagiarism was real, but claimed that it was “not serious.” The Times article is titled “Conservative Activist Seizes on Passages From Harris Book,” with the sub-headline: “A report by Christopher Rufo says the Democratic presidential nominee copied five short passages for her 2009 book on crime. A plagiarism expert said the lapses were not serious.”
From the Times:
The passages called into question by Mr. Rufo on his Substack platform involve about 500 words in the approximately 65,000-word, 200-page book. Ms. Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, wrote the book with another author when she was the district attorney in San Francisco.
In a review of the book, The New York Times found that none of the passages in question took the ideas or thoughts of another writer, which is considered the most serious form of plagiarism. Instead, the sentences copy descriptions of programs or statistical information that appear elsewhere.
…
Jonathan Bailey, a plagiarism consultant in New Orleans and the publisher of Plagiarism Today, said on Monday that his initial reaction to Mr. Rufo’s claims was that the errors were not serious, given the size of the document.
The Times shifted the focus from Harris to Rufo, whom it implied is a racist: “Mr. Rufo is part of a loose confederation of conservative writers and activists who, during the past year, have tried to expose plagiarism among academics, many of whom have been Black scholars who work in the field of diversity and inclusion. … Some academics … have characterized the campaign as racist.”
Earlier Monday, Breitbart News’ John Nolte predicted: “The corporate media will almost certainly either ignore this scandal or attempt to wrist-flick and ‘fact check’ it away as a ‘Republican-fabricated controversy.’”
Cue the corporate media “fact checkers”:
“Vance’s tweet is missing important context. Kamala Harris only copied some of her book from Wikipedia.”
— JD Vance (@JDVance) October 14, 2024
Likewise, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), the Republican vice presidential nominee, predicted that the media would defend Harris by saying she had only copied parts of her book:
Harris’s plagiarism apparently included lifting passages from Wikipedia, which is not considered a reliable source.
The Times commonly reports the act of omitting or deleting attribution for passages quoted from other sources as “plagiarism” and not merely as “errors.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
