20050819 Lifting Material from the Blog World

20050819 Lifting Material from the Blog World

There Are Two Possibilities Here

August 19th, 2005

http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2005/08/ok-there-are-two-possibilities-here.html

Hat Tip: http://wonkette.com/

No More Mister Nice Blog calls out Washington Times columnist John McCaslin for retailing an anecdote, sans attribution and with lightly mussed word changes, from a conservative blog Libertas.

The column concerns an incident at a film-festival screening of the Ronald Reagan vehicle The Killers, in which the audience burst out into spontaneous applause when Reagan's character was shot and killed. One can cluck--oh, can one cluck--about journalistic ethics and whatnot, but we sort of take this as a positive sign:

Clearly the professionally indignant conservative pundits are running out of things to be operatically outraged about if they're lifting ideas from blog entries about film revivals. What's next, after all? Complaints that Harry Reid's manner is curt, or that Ted Kennedy is red-complexioned and bulbous? That the peanut bags you get on airlines are hard to open?

Though we do of course look askance at the MSM's unacknowledged lifting of material from blogs. That's bloggers' work: Step off, Mr. Salaried Columnist Man! -- HOLLY MARTINS

UPDATE - - Okay _ _ I finally found it:

There Are Two Possibilities Here

[NMMNB, via Romenseko]

No More Mister Nice Blog

It's Karl Rove's world. We just live in it.

http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2005/08/ok-there-are-two-possibilities-here.html

Thursday, August 18, 2005

OK, there are two possibilities here: either John McCaslin, the "Inside the Beltway" columnist for The Washington Times, e-mails rough drafts of some of his work to right-wing blogs and then spends a week revising the e-mailed items before putting them in the paper -- or he's not above reading such blogs and doing a little unacknowledged "borrowing."

On August 8, Libertas, the blog of the right-wing Liberty Film Festival, ran an item about a screening of The Killers, Ronald Reagan's last movie. Reagan is shot in the movie; at the screening, this shooting was cheered. The Libertas item is prefaced with "I received this email this morning from a friend of mine," then the e-mail begins:

I have a report of a bizarre, disturbing incident....

Yesterday -- nine days later -- McCaslin's column led with an item on the same incident. McCaslin's column begins:

We're here to report a rather bizarre, if not disturbing incident....

The Libertas e-mail continues:

The crowd at the screening of The Killers, on Thursday night erupted in cheers when Reagan was shot and killed. The crowd was comprised of Hollywood people – film preservationists, reviewers, scholars, researchers, actors and actresses, writers. L.A. Confidential director Curtis Hanson was also in the crowd for the movie.

McCaslin's item continues:

Well – read the entire piece here: There Are Two Possibilities Here

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