Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Margaret Wente and the New York Times again: “Plagiarism or poetic licence”?

The question has been asked before. Following this and this, another recent article by the Globe and Mail scribe. The passage is short, but quite similar to a NYT book review.

Wente: …But it hasn't worked out that way, Mr. West writes. Instead, what we've built is a vast cultural dependency. Americans and Canadians are fighting and dying while the Afghans by and large stand by and do nothing to help them.

Dexter Filkins: …This isn’t happening. What we have created instead, West shows, is a vast culture of dependency: Americans are fighting and dying, while the Afghans by and large stand by and do nothing to help them.

**

Here again is a side-by-side comparison of one bit (from a previous post), with the overlap of prose in caps. Like Wente's identification error in another un-attributed quote (recently corrected), unclear attribution can produce other problems:

Wente: One of the world's most authoritative sources of breastfeeding research is Michael Kramer, professor of pediatrics at McGill University. "The public health breastfeeding promotion information is way out of date," he says. The trouble is that the breastfeeding lobby is at war with the formula milk industry, and neither side is being very scientific. "When it becomes a crusade, people are not very rational."

Rumbelow: ...one of the world's most authoritative sources of breastfeeding research: Michael Kramer, professor of paediatrics at McGill University, Montreal.

..."The public health breastfeeding promotion information is way out of date," Kramer says. The trouble is, he said, that the breastfeeding lobby is at war with the formula milk industry, and "neither side is being very scientific ... when it becomes a crusade, people are not very rational."

Even if one justifies the use of another journalist’s quotes, the prose overlap substantially exceeds them.

And aside from the overall similarity, that sentence, “The trouble is that the breastfeeding lobby is at war with the formula milk industry, and neither side is being very scientific”, raises other questions; given the migrating quotation marks in Wente’s version, the last six words change from being a recorded quote by Kramer in Rumbleow’s article, to (also) appearing as Wente’s prose in the Globe. Is that acceptable?

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Margaret Wente, plagiarism and misquotation?

As already discussed here, in “The Tyranny of mother’s milk”, not only does Margaret Wente sprinkle her text with un-attributed quotes, the apparent borrowing extends to surrounding material; one paragraph contains significant overlap with the words of another journalist who she does not credit. Of Wente’s sixty-four word paragraph, only a third is actual quotation –comment from McGill’s Dr. Michael Kramer in a 2009 Times article. Turns out this is problematical in more ways than one. But first, to recap that bit:

Wente: One of the world’s most authoritative sources of breastfeeding research is Michael Kramer, professor of pediatrics at McGill University. “The public health breastfeeding promotion information is way out of date,” he says. The trouble is that the breastfeeding lobby is at war with the formula milk industry, and neither side is being very scientific. “When it becomes a crusade, people are not very rational.”

Rumbelow: …one of the world’s most authoritative sources of breastfeeding research: Michael Kramer, professor of paediatrics at McGill University, Montreal.

…“The public health breastfeeding promotion information is way out of date,” Kramer says. The trouble is, he said, that the breastfeeding lobby is at war with the formula milk industry, and “neither side is being very scientific ... when it becomes a crusade, people are not very rational.”

Look at those passages closely; in Wente’s version the quotation marks slide over, shortening the quote and thereby presenting as her own prose what in Rumbelow’s article were words in quotation marks by Dr. Kramer. Should the words “neither side is being very scientific”, which move out of quotes and into Wente’s prose, have been attributed to Dr. Kramer, as they appear in The Times? Or to Ms. Rumbelow? And should the preceding prose which links the two quotes, and which is virtually identical to the 2009 article, also have been attributed to Ms. Rumbelow?

But there are other problems with Wente’s use of this material:

Rumbelow’s is a 2009 first person opinion (not a report) about the British National Health Service’s breastfeeding pamphlet, which (her article says) she received “last year”. It appears that Dr. Kramer of McGill was asked to comment on a British NHS pamphlet from 2008 (Rumbelow writes: “with my NHS leaflet in hand, I put its list of health benefits to Kramer”). But Wente, in omitting this context and inserting the material in an article about breastfeeding here, leads readers to believe the Montreal doctor views Canada’s 2011 “public health breastfeeding promotion information” as “out of date”. Like the shifting quote, is this accurate?

Worse, a quick search turns up the following article in the British Independent, in which Dr. Kramer repudiates the “misquotation” by Rumbelow. Why does Wente, on the same side of the Atlantic as Kramer, use old quotes in an opinion piece about the British NHS which he had since disavowed?

Here’s an article about the Kramer misquotation in The Independent:

"’Journalists certainly have the right to express their own opinions, but not to misquote experts they choose to interview in order to support those opinions. That sort of sensationalist journalist would not surprise me from the tabloids, but I had expected better from The Atlantic and The Times,’ Kramer said last night.

The Times quoted Kramer, who is based at McGill University, Montreal, as saying there was ‘very little evidence’ breastfeeding reduces the risk of a range of diseases from leukaemia to heart disease. Yet, what he actually said was: ‘The existing evidence suggests that breastfeeding may protect against the risk of leukaemia, lymphoma, inflammatory bowel disease, type 1 diabetes, heart disease and blood pressure.’ All he did concede was that we need ‘more and better studies to pursue these links’, a common cry from academics lacking in funding”.

***

Dr. Kramer’s published views include the following, which appeared in the Globe and Mail:

"’Our study provides the strongest evidence to date that prolonged and exclusive breastfeeding makes kids smarter,’ said lead investigator Michael Kramer, a professor of pediatrics and epidemiology at McGill.”

So aside from Wente’s lack of attribution, there are related factual problems resulting from her methods. It’s alarming to think of how such practices might be used to provide inaccurate information.

Wente’s overlaps with Rumbelow go beyond the borrowed quotes of Dr. Kramer. But even if it were limited to this, many experts view even the use of other people’s quotes as plagiarism. (Widely reported remarks by a world leader don’t require attribution, but when a reporter or columnist seeks out and gathers more obscure material for an article, the situation seems to be different).

An article on Poynter Online about a professor whose opinion column was cancelled for one instance of un-attributed quotes is titled “Merrill’s offense was plagiarism”. Jacqueline Banaszynski, its author, holds the Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of Missouri, and the article is co-signed by Professors Daryl Moen and George Kennedy, Professor Emeritus, journalism at Missouri, and Professor Charles Davis, Executive Director of the National Freedom of Information Center.

Discussing whether the cancellation of Merrill’s column was warranted, the experts ask whether acknowledgement and apology would have sufficed, but they are unequivocal about the offense: “the use of material gathered by another writer, without crediting that writer, is plagiarism”.

One would think that this goes double when the overlapping material extends well beyond the quotes, as it does in Wente’s article. And further, in reproducing both the same quotes and surrounding prose as Ms. Rumbleow, Wente leaves readers with an impression of Dr. Kramer’s views which contrasts with his comments in the article published in Independent and elsewhere. Might this have been avoided had Ms. Wente attributed his remarks to the older article by Rumbelow? Did she inquire about his later comments in The Independent? And, most importantly, for someone who is critical of plagiarism in others, does Ms. Wente provide adequate attribution for the overlap in prose surrounding the quotes (as well as the quotes themselves) in the 2009 Times article?

Clarification: This post has been modified to reflect the fact that Ms. Wente contacted Dr. Kramer.

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Margaret Wente, plagiarism?

We’ve looked at Margaret Wente’s similar problems here and here.

Her column in today’s Globe not only borrows quotes, but in one case, appears to reproduce a whole paragraph - including another journalist’s introduction and connecting sentence.

A 2009 article by Helen Rumbelow in the Sunday Times quotes Michael Kramer of McGill. Rather than taking the trouble to contact him herself for some fresh observations (they are on the same side of the Atlantic, after all), Wente reproduces the two Kramer quotes along with Rumbelow’s introduction and linking observation, “the trouble is, he said, that the breastfeeding lobby is at war with the formula milk industry”.

Wente: One of the world’s most authoritative sources of breastfeeding research is Michael Kramer, professor of pediatrics at McGill University. “The public health breastfeeding promotion information is way out of date,” he says. The trouble is that the breastfeeding lobby is at war with the formula milk industry, and neither side is being very scientific. “When it becomes a crusade, people are not very rational.”

Rumbelow: …one of the world’s most authoritative sources of breastfeeding research: Michael Kramer, professor of paediatrics at McGill University, Montreal. “The public health breastfeeding promotion information is way out of date,” Kramer says. The trouble is, he said, that the breastfeeding lobby is at war with the formula milk industry, and “neither side is being very scientific ... when it becomes a crusade, people are not very rational.”

Another quote, and some language regarding Joan Wolf also appears to come from Rumbelow:

Wente: “The evidence to date suggests it probably doesn’t make much difference if you breastfeed,” says Joan Wolf, the author of a daring book called Is Breast Best? Ms. Wolf, an American academic, has examined the medical literature in detail.

Rumbelow: Joan Wolf is an American academic who… examines the medical studies in painstaking detail. “The evidence to date suggests it probably doesn’t make much difference if you breastfeed.”

And while Wente identifies the following quotes as something Wolf “told one group of moms”, the following exchange appears to come from an online Q & A with Wolf on the blog “Fearless Formula Feeders”.

Wente: “Breastfeeding is part of what I call total motherhood, the belief that mothers are both capable of and responsible for preventing any imaginable risk to their babies and children” she told one group of moms. “We are making mothers crazy by telling them that they have the power, if they are willing to put forth the effort and make sacrifices, to prevent all sorts of bad things from happening to their kids.”

Fearless Formula Feeder: Finally breastfeeding is part of what I call total motherhood, the belief that mothers are both capable of and responsible for preventing any imaginable risk to their babies and children…But we are making mothers crazy today by telling them that they have the power, if they are willing to put forth the effort and make sacrifices, to prevent all sorts of bad things from happening to their kids.

**

Do they not pay Wente enough to gather her own material? Does she have to borrow not only from established journalists, but bloggers? Perhaps a little Wentism is in order. Can I say Margaret Wente is a lazy sloth? After all, she described Elizabeth May as a “hyperactive chipmunk”, ‘media spotlight hog’, and “biggest loser”. She didn’t offer much to back up that bit of name-calling. I searched the article in vain for a little bit of work - three, two, or even one reason why May is like a hyperactive chipmunk. The high priced, laconic contrarian could have at least done something with nuts. So (for free) we’ll close with three facts about sloths:

1) The coarse hair of the sloth grows in a direction opposite to that of other mammals.

2) While nominally a mammal, a sloth's fluctuating body temperature makes it seem cold-blooded, like a snake or reptile.

3) The sloth is so lazy it remains hanging from its perch long after it’s dead and has stopped writing anything interesting or original.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Globe and Mail corrects Wente’s borrowed quote

A correction appeared in the print edition of the Globe on May 13 for one error in a more widely flawed article by Margaret Wente on the Gulf Oil spill. We looked at it earlier.

“A quotation about the abundance of red snapper in the gulf of Mexico, in a column of April 26, should have been attributed to Michael Carron, chief scientist of the Northern Gulf Institute”.

No link available.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

George Monbiot’s unedited letter to the Globe and Mail

( a re-posting following the great Blogger crash)

The other day we looked at a column in which Margaret Wente described George Monbiot as Elizabeth May’s “biggest critic”. Monbiot had sent along a copy of his response to the Globe and Mail, an edited version of which was published. Globe editors removed Monbiot's references to Wente’s "outrageous misrepresentations and distortions”, and to his articles being “radically misconstrued”. They also removed a sentence in which he described himself as “a great admirer” of Ms. May. Below is his full letter, with the excised bits in bold.

Dear Sir,

Margaret Wente's column, in which she claims to summarize and support two articles of mine, contains a number of outrageous misrepresentations and distortions. She suggests I said that environmentalists "don't understand the science and they don't understand the economics." I've said nothing of the kind.

She also claims that I am Elizabeth May's "biggest critic." If so, May has little to worry about. I am a great admirer of hers, and I'm delighted that she is now a member of parliament. I am sure that, like Caroline Lucas, the sole Green MP in the UK, she will do an excellent job of holding the government to account, and will enrich the political life of the nation. Her "biggest critic" has never said a word against her.

Elizabeth and I could, if we tried, doubtless find issues on which we disagree, but that, I believe, is something to celebrate. Environmentalism is perhaps the most politically diverse movement in history, accommodating a wide range of views and perspectives, while drawing people together through a shared concern for the planet, its people, its places and its living creatures. The fact that we are able to hold a wide range of views without excoriating each other suggests that the green movement is a haven of free and independent thought, all too rare in the current political climate of micro-management and control freakery.

My articles sought to lay out the difficulties and dilemmas we environmentalists face, and to contribute to an open, public discussion of the kind that few other movements are prepared to contemplate. It is hard to understand how they could have been so radically misconstrued.

Yours Sincerely,

George Monbiot

Globe and Mail version:

Margaret Wente suggests I said that environmentalists “don’t understand the science and they don’t understand the economics” (Hard Questions For Ms. May – May 10). I’ve said nothing of the kind.

She also claims that I am Elizabeth May’s “biggest critic.” If so, Ms. May has little to worry about. I am delighted that she is now a member of Parliament. I am sure that she will do an excellent job of holding the government to account, and will enrich the political life of the nation. Her “biggest critic” has never said a word against her.

Elizabeth and I could, if we tried, doubtless find issues on which we disagree, but that, I believe, is something to celebrate. Environmentalism is perhaps the most politically diverse movement in history, accommodating a wide range of views and perspectives. The fact that we are able to hold a wide range of views without excoriating each other suggests that the green movement is a haven of free and independent thought, all too rare in the current political climate of micro-management and control freakery.

George Monbiot

****

Monbiot writes to Globe about Wente's "outrageous misrepresentations” . Globe responds by misrepresenting his letter, and removing criticism.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

More on Wente, laziness and plagiarism, plus May and Monbiot

George Monbiot is a serious thinker. Too bad the Globe and Mail only has Margaret Wente. It’s remarkable how many words one can take from another writer, and still manage to distort them.

We’ve already looked at Wente and plagiarism here - where, along with various near identical passages, she casually re-assigns or invents identities – for example, turning Dr. Mike Carron, a scientist at Mississippi State University, into "a fisherman" in one of many un-attributed bits of other articles.

Wente: “Red snapper are unbelievable right now,” one fisherman said. “You could put a rock on the end a string and they’d bite it.”

AP: "Red snapper are unbelievable right now," said Mike Carron, head of the Northern Gulf Institute in Mississippi. "Now you could put a rock on the end of string and they'll bite it."

Today’s piece on Elizabeth May again shows real effort at recycling, with Wente still being somewhat sparing with quotation marks:

Wente: “But as Mr. Monbiot writes, ‘The problem we face is not that we have too little fossil fuel but too much.’ As oil declines, economies will switch to oil sands, shale gas, coal and ultra-deep reserves”.

Monbiot: “The problem we face is not that we have too little fossil fuel, but too much. As oil declines, economies will switch to tar sands, shale gas and coal; as accessible coal declines, they'll switch to ultra-deep reserves.”

Why does Wente limit her quote to the first bit? To turn ‘tar sands’ into ‘oil sands’?

Or here.

Wente: “As Mr. Monbiot writes gloomily, ‘All of us in the environment movement – whether we propose accommodation, radical downsizing or collapse – are lost. None of us yet has a convincing account of how humanity can get out of this mess.’ He hopes that by laying out the problem, he can encourage environmentalists to ‘abandon magical thinking’ and recognize the contradictions they confront”.

Monbiot: “All of us in the environment movement, in other words – whether we propose accommodation, radical downsizing or collapse – are lost. None of us yet has a convincing account of how humanity can get out of this mess…I hope that by laying out the problem I can encourage us to address it more logically, to abandon magical thinking and to recognise the contradictions we confront.”

Again, why so stingy with those little things? They don’t take much space.

Wente offers little other than carefully skewed and selected Monbiot and cheap shots at May. The observations that seem to be her own are a bit wacky: “But greens neglect to mention that hundreds of millions of Chinese people have begun consuming stupendous quantities of brick, copper and manufactured goods in their rise from poverty – nearly all of it produced with fossil fuels”.

“Consuming stupendous quantities of brick… produced with fossil fuels”? Of all the things to complain about in China - brick?

In 2001 China announced a ban on traditional bricks made with fossil fuels, in favour of using brick made of ash from power plants in cleaner kilns” - recycling the byproduct from coal plants, rather than using fossil fuels to produce clay bricks. China is apparently now a leader in “state of the art technology for brick manufacturing”, producing “energy efficient… flyash bricks as an alternative… to the commonly used burnt clay bricks, which use fossil fuel for their production”.

Now, "non-baked bricks account for 55-60 per cent of building materials used in China."

But the most spectacular dishonesty is Wente’s assertion that George Monbiot is Elizabeth May’s “biggest critic”. For this, her central argument, she produces not a single word from the man. One can’t find anything Monbiot has said that is “critical” of Elizabeth May. Nor does he refer to her as a “hyperactive chipmunk” with “a matchless ability to hog the spotlight”.

The two are most well known for debating together on the same side, in the Munk Debates on Climate Change. If Wente can substantiate her claim that Monbiot is May’s “biggest critic”, she should offer up some evidence. And please, Ms. Wente, try doing it the professional way, with quotes.

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Margaret Wente: photo funnies, laziness, and plagiarism

I try to avoid Margaret Wente. "Mom, she's writing about the urban elites again", my son will yawn at breakfast. But the photo accompanying "Fear and loathing among the eastern elites" May 7, 2011) was curious. It showed how Wente's stock character, the 'snobby eastern urban elite', had "demonized" Stephen Harper. The unidentified photo illustrated the "vitriolic animosity" - "the hatchet job the Liberals have done" on Harper, and how poor Steven Harper is "routinely depicted as a cross between Darth Vader and Lord Voldemort".

I thought the picture of Harper with horns looked like something from a kid's Facebook page. So I checked. Unidentified and missing entirely from the online version (where there's a cartoon about Pakistan), the photo seems to be of this guy hiding behind John Baird - a grainy shot of an eco-activist at a 2007 demo in Stanley Park. Not "eastern", likely not "elite', and, if I had to guess, maybe anarchist or Green, rather than Liberal. Perhaps Wente doesn't choose her images, but this illustrates a deeper sloppiness.

Were the article to have used a Toronto G20 protestor instead of one from B.C., the problem remains; if you're going to complain about vitriolic demonizing, you can't compare the actions of some unsanctioned individual at a demo with the official advertising campaign of, say, the ruling party of Canada. They are not the same thing. To pretend they are is a bit like saying a squad of fully armed RCMP is equivalent to a lone guy with a stapler.


Andrew Coyne highlights the most interesting bit from Paul Wells' election post mortem- a gloating Conservative's analysis of their multi million dollar Ignatieff attack campaign:

'''They say that we try to portray Ignatieff in our ads and so on as a weak and flailing professor,' the war room staffer said. 'No, that’s how we portrayed Dion. Dion was weak, you know, Dion was ‘not a leader.’ …Michael Ignatieff, in our narrative, is a political opportunist who is calculating, who will do and say anything to get elected….He’s a schemer…He’s a malicious human being…that’s kind of the sentiment we’re getting at...With Ignatieff, it’s ‘He’s a bad man.'"

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure any defamation decision would be heavily influenced by whether the offending material was a handmade poster or a national advertising campaign in heavy rotation during the Academy Awards and the Superbowl. People would rightly see the damage from one as being qualitatively and quantitatively different from the other. That's 'natural justice' or (if you're an old-fashioned Mike Harris Conservative) "common sense". But Ms. Wente would have us believe they are the same thing.

Wells also describes how Patrick Muttart (later fired from Harper's 2011 campaign for allegedly shopping a fake photo of Ignatieff to Sun Media), "had the party register a website in Montenegro so its URL could be www.ignatieff.me, reinforcing the notion that the Liberal was 'just in it for me.' They stuffed it full of embarrassing old quotes. Ads ran for weeks on television and radio."

I thought some dumb kid had set up that site, but now we learn it was the PMO.

Is it elitist to say the picture in Wente's article is cheap? Wente, a private school gal with no kids, from a wealthy family, who hobnobs with the Bay Street set and writes for the most elite paper in the country, regularly tells us how anti-elitist she is. My definition of 'elitist' would be someone who is privileged, arrogant and lazy, and Wente is arguably all three.

Wente: Laziness or plagiarism?

Possible plagiarism has already been discussed. But there are lots of other examples, like this:

Wente writes about Hernando de Soto in "The bad-paper trail: Where are the toxic assets?", Globe, May 2, 2009. Almost identical wording had appeared in de Soto's Cato Institute profile:

Wente: "delivering formal property rights to poor people can bring them out of the sway of demagogues and into the modern global economy…"

Cato Institute: “Delivering formal property rights to the poor can bring them out of the sway of demagogues and into the extended order of the modern global economy”.

Wente: “For his challenge to the status quo, the Shining Path, the Peruvian Marxist terrorist group, targeted him for assassination. His offices were bombed and his car was machine-gunned. Today, the Shining Path is moribund, and Mr. de Soto continues his passionate mission”.

Cato Institute: “For his efforts, the Peruvian Marxist terror group Shining Path targeted him for assassination. The institute's offices were bombed. His car was machine-gunned. Today the Shining Path is moribund, but de Soto remains very much alive and a passionate advocate…”

****

I'd ignored Wente since finding a bunch of similar stuff in her articles a few years back, but a quick look at recent work shows she's still up to her old tricks.

Here are some bits from Wente's recent piece on the Gulf Oil spill:

Wente: “Red snapper are unbelievable right now,” one fisherman said. “You could put a rock on the end a string and they’d bite it.”

AP: "Red snapper are unbelievable right now," said Mike Carron, head of the Northern Gulf Institute in Mississippi. "Now you could put a rock on the end of string and they'll bite it."

Lifting that quote from a 2010 AP report, Wente also turns Dr. Mike Carron, a scientist at Mississippi State University, into "a fisherman". Sloppiness, or anti-elitist reflex?

Wente: “People are having a hard time accepting it. Me, too,” says Ed Overton, a chemist at Louisiana State University. “There are things that are wrong. There is still oil out there. But it is not nearly as bad as I expected it would be a year later.”

Press Register: "People are having a hard time accepting it. Me too,” said Ed Overton, a chemist at Louisiana State University…. "There is still oil out there. But it is not nearly as bad as I expected it would be a year later.”

http://blog.al.com/live/2011/04/scientists_optimistic_but_caut.html

Wente: most scientists believe the Gulf is in surprisingly good shape. When three dozen of them were asked to rate the current health of the Gulf’s ecosystem on a 1-to-100 scale, they gave it an average grade of 68 – not bad, considering that, before the spill, they gave it a 71.

Fox: More than three dozen scientists grade the Gulf's big picture health a 68 on average, using a 1-to-100 scale. What's remarkable is that that's just a few points below the 71 the same researchers gave last summer when asked what grade they would give the ecosystem before the spill.

Even the Fox article, like the others, goes on to acknowledge that the Gulf is not in good shape, but Wente studiously avoids the thrust of each article she cribs from. Here's just one more early example:

In “Not every girl can be a winner” (also May 2, 2009), Wente denounced the Girl Guides for introducing “body image” badges to combat anorexia.

Wente offers quotes, without attribution. Two of them had appeared in a 2004 article by Frank Stephenson in Research in Review.

Stephenson: "Or so says Martin Seligman, an outspoken critic of the self-esteem movement. Seligman considers self-esteem exercises a menace to society... 'What I think has gone wrong,' Seligman says, 'is that we now think we should inject self-esteem directly into our young people, as opposed to producing warranted self-esteem, which I believe comes from doing well with the people you love, doing well in sports, [and] doing well in school.'"

Wente: “Among the biggest critics of the self-esteem movement is cognitive psychologist Martin Seligman. ‘We now think we should inject self-esteem directly into our young people, as opposed to producing warranted self-esteem, which I believe comes from doing well with the people you love, doing well in sports, doing well in school,’ he said. In his view, self-esteem exercises are a menace to society”.

Wente doesn't credit Stephenson' at all, even though the words she uses to describe Seligman’s views - “self esteem exercises are a menace to society”, are his.

Stephenson also summarizes the work of his colleague Roy Baumeister, who Wente also quotes.

Frank Stephenson: "As a graduate student Baumeister had accepted claims for the benefits of self-esteem uncritically... Baumeister set out to answer the...question, ultimately publishing several even-handed appraisals of self-esteem...'People who have elevated or inflated views of themselves tend to alienate others,' the report states."

Wente: "'People who have elevated or inflated views of themselves tend to alienate others,' wrote social psychologist Roy Baumeister, who used to believe in the importance of instilling self-esteem, until he reviewed all the research".

The Baumeister quote is buried in a long report co-authored by Jennifer Campbell, Joachim Krueger, and Kathleen Vohs, but it appears as a header in Stephenson's piece. Wente uses the highlighted quote, attributing it to Baumeister, without crediting the report's other authors, and again without citing Stephenson.

Wente claims that the Guides’ decision to introduce badges related to healthy body image is a bad idea, omitting the most relevant findings in Stephenson’s article, which contradicts her claim.

Frank Stephenson: "But low self-esteem does play a substantial role in eating disorders, a big problem, particularly for young women. Today's teen and college-aged women face a national epidemic of anorexia and bulimia, two closely associated emotional disorders that can be fatal if not treated. A great deal of evidence indicates that feelings of inadequacy and self-loathing-low self-esteem-are in fact risk factors in disordered eating, Baumeister's report noted. Work by Kathleen Vohs, one of the report's authors, for example, found that bulimia is strongly associated with low self-esteem".

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20090502.COWENT02ART2013//TPStory/National

http://www.rinr.fsu.edu/summer2004/summer2004.pdf

http://www.blnz.com/news/2008/04/23/Rise_Fall_Self-Esteem_0552.html

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090501.wcowent02/BNStory/specialComment/home

**

I'm no expert on plagiarism or inadequate attribution, but Wente's practices seem not dissimilar to David Warren's, which the Ontario Press Council found lacking. And amongst academics and teachers whom Wente regularly faults for being soft on plagiarism, some examples from her own work would likely merit a fail. That she gets away with it perhaps indicates the different rules that apply to 'eastern urban elites'.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Grassroots and Astroturf

So the 2011 Canadian election marks a ‘historic’ political shift. But perhaps we flatter ourselves in thinking our actions alone are responsible for it. Maybe the change is a larger movement of the landscape - not just political ground.

First, a few definitions:

Mediate: -To settle or reconcile differences

-To have a relation to two differing persons or things

Media: means of communication reaching large numbers of people, television, newspapers, radio

Representation: -An image or likeness of something

-The state or condition of serving as an official delegate, agent, or spokesperson

-The right or privilege of being represented by delegates in a legislative body

- A body of legislators that serve on behalf of a constituency

The election signs have been picked up and the lawn is in bad shape. People say Liberals need to “rebuild” by getting back to their “grassroots”. But what if this election shows that political parties - as organizational entities – are as much a casualty of this election as the Bloc or Liberals? Even amongst Conservatives, the notion of “grassroots” has become, under Harper’s command and control, a kind of quaint creation myth. Remember that old ‘recall your MP’ stuff? Forget the people who sent them there - even Conservative Cabinet Ministers are muzzled. So is grassroots politics dead? Has the changeability of politically coloured “brands” replaced grassroots organization?

It certainly seems like the 2011 election results underscore how devalued the notion has become. Conservatives ran an Astroturf campaign, with Harper droning the same message from teleprompters, even in grassy backyards full of kids, while the Orange wave caught them off guard. But was the Orange wave a grassroots kind of politics?

That Québecers could elect MPs like Charmaine Borg and Ruth Ellen Brousseau shows that, even in the most politically engaged part of Canada - where organizations like labour unions are still very strong - image trumps grassroots organization, and the ‘leader’s’ image trumps everything, including qualifications for prospective MPs. (Rather than traditional areas like labour, a significant number of Québec NDP candidates were recruited from the hallways of McGill, their networking skills amounting to not much more than a Facebook page).

It is historic that in Québec, passionate, long-held nationalist aspirations seem to vanish overnight – replaced, in some cases, by new MPs who don’t live in their ridings, never bothered to show up to campaign in them or meet their constituents, and apparently, barely speak French. Conservatives, many of whom themselves didn’t bother to show up at anachronistic things like candidates’ meetings, are fine with that.

Granted, lots of the newly minted NDP MPs are women, which is good. And perhaps the energetic young people will do a good job; many Bloc MPs, first elected without much experience, worked well on behalf of Québecers and all Canadians in Parliament. Despite the apparent joy at their demise, their departure is also a loss. Their hard work came with a higher than average integrity quotient; they had no expectation of the perks ladled out to past Liberals or current Conservatives in the form of Senate seats, regulatory board appointments, or extravagant spending in their ridings.

I’m not critical of the NDP – it is a party with authentic prairie grass roots that will defend social democratic values. They ran a great campaign, and Jack Layton was reasonably judged the most trustworthy and likeable leader. But simply put, leaders shouldn’t matter that much. And it’s not a good thing when they do.

And that’s the problem – one exacerbated by a lazy media who find it easier to focus on personalities rather than policies, and who reinforced Harper’s media strategy of zeroing in on the leader with attack ads – something begun with their “Not a Leader” attacks on Dion, and continued with Ignatieff - to predictable effect. Major outlets mouthed the script, asking Ignatieff “why he came back”, focusing almost exclusively on the leaders’ personae and on “Biggest Loser” story arcs. Air time that could have been given over to issues was wasted on the fatuous Nanos “Leadership Index” polls, where we were told what we were thinking about the leaders’ ‘image’ – who was trending up and who ‘spiraling’ down. We watched ourselves watching ourselves, rather than finding out about policies or local candidates. Which leader better ‘reflects’ us? Are we “boring”, or ‘catching the wave’?

After picking the debate’s winners and losers - regardless of actual results, someone must be chosen on reality TV - we were told how the ‘story’ would develop, and we made it so. But on Political Idol, shouldn’t the finalists at least get to do a few more numbers before we vote them off?

To “mediate” means, among other things, to go between. Imagine, just for a moment, an election without polls, attack ads and televised leaders’ debates – where concerns arising from the “grassroots” would be voiced by voters at meetings, and where the party’s policies were articulated and communicated by candidates themselves in their own words, in their own ridings – where MP hopefuls, not pundits, pollsters, or leaders, “mediated” the views of their party to the public and vice versa. Of course it’s impossible to picture politics without the 24-hour media ether in which it now lives, but it’s worth remembering that that was the context in which our political system arose, and in which it was designed to work.

But as constitutional expert Peter Russell has warned, we’re moving toward a Presidential model without any of the opposing balances of American legislative bodies. Mr. Harper has taken unprecedented steps in de-legitimizing the institution of Parliament. This was an election in which there was no sense from the mainstream media that we were actually electing Members of Parliament, rather than leaders, to “represent” us. Representation has effectively morphed from an earlier political meaning to an aesthetic one, as represented by advertising and other media appearances, and with power shifting from earlier bodies along with it.

And advertising was important in the Orange wave. On a trip to Montréal at the beginning of the campaign, I was gob-smacked by the strong presence of NDP advertising this time around. The images of Jack Layton alternated with those of Duceppe on every light standard along Boul. René Levesque and other major thoroughfares, signaling a two-way race. Perhaps more importantly, the NDP TV ads in Québec were brilliant. They ‘reflected’ Québecers’ sophisticated aesthetic back to them. They were stylish and funny, with a perfectly pitched message. Perhaps the NDP won Québec in large part through the sheer brilliance of its advertising, and, as they themselves acknowledge, by “matching the Conservatives ‘dollar-for-dollar’ to the tune of $23 million” in their advertising budget. But as noted, they had little in the way of on-the-ground organization or qualified, experienced candidates. The aesthetic definition of representation clearly trumped the political one.

Sure, the parties themselves should accept some blame for not articulating issues. And some journalists, like Andrew Coyne, addressed issues like ethics and the importance of Parliament. Some reporters, like Terry Milewski on the Harper bus, tried to ask tough questions, only to be shouted down - the crowd booing him just like they might boo Simon Cowell. But mostly, journalists analyzed the leaders not in terms of whether a claim was true or false, good policy or bad, but purely in terms of marketing, and whether the leader put in a good ‘performance’. That is, when they weren’t talking about their own performances; Rosemary Barton’s twittish tweets about her nap time, laundry and lunches being just one example of self-indulgence.

What we can take away from this election is that grassroots political organizing, MPs, and Parliament itself, are of less value now than when we entered an election following a historic Contempt of Parliament ruling. It’s not just the Conservatives who view Parliament with contempt – it’s all of us.

And sadly, the lessons people may take away are these; personal attack ads, and the erosion of our democratic institutions are rewarded. And real political work – at least on the part of candidates and their volunteers knocking on doors - doesn’t pay. After this election, why would anyone bother, when you can coast to victory vacationing in Las Vegas?

Ironically, it was the Liberals who were the most old-fashioned - almost small ‘c’ conservative. Most of them were on the ground working hard, and the free-access, unscripted, townhalls of Ignatieff’s campaign, like Layton’s own, relied on his actually meeting the people he wanted to ‘represent’ (in the old, ‘political’ sense). But he couldn’t overcome the ‘representation’ created by the new (to us, at least) style of attack ads that big ‘c’ Conservatives ran.

Personally, this election, I saw a lot of grass. When going door to door, you have to walk a lot farther trying to avoid someone’s lawn. I’ve voted for several parties, and never belonged to one. But this year, I decided to volunteer for the guy most likely to defeat the Conservative incumbent in my riding, the infamous and, some would say, infantile, Pierre Poilievre. If I lived in Paul Dewar’s riding, I would have done the same for him. But this candidate was a Liberal, and a good one – a smart, self-effacing young lawyer who made headlines early in the campaign when rifle targets were spray painted over the photos of his face on his election signs. He was quiet, serious, ethical, dignified, and worked incredibly hard knocking on doors across a large riding for months prior to the election. The Green Party candidate worked hard on the ground too. The NDPer was virtually invisible in my riding.

I didn’t do as much as others. Some people had doors slammed in their faces. I was dreading that. It was clear, from going door to door, that those attack ads had done their work. But my best moment was after a chat with a guy in the military, who shook my hand and thanked me.

Given the loss, it’s tempting to quote my re-elected Conservative MP’s earlier comments in a Parliamentary Committee - “Fuck these guys” - or echo the ‘bent elbow’, ‘up yours’ salute he delivered in the House. But because the candidate and volunteers behaved with such integrity and dignity, one should respect it, and behave appropriately.

Indeed, despite pessimism, my sincere congratulations go out to candidates like Ryan Keon, to those like him who worked hard, and to the people who laboured on the ground for good candidates (of any stripe). For someone who’s never done it, this was eye opening and inspiring. And it is on behalf of those people – who put in weeks and months of their time - that one feels most saddened by various aspects of the election result.

But despite the increasing lack of reward and its questionable efficacy, good people continue to do that kind of grassroots work. As is often the case with volunteering, you get more out of it than you give. Meeting these people was a counterbalance to the cynicism of the current political Astroturf. And people on the progressive end of the spectrum would do well to stop bickering, and figure out how to harness the energy and dedication of people like that to the next political wave - whatever colour it turns out to be.