Below is an updated version of a post from earlier today.
Given Ms. Wente’s history of attribution problems (and other ethical lapses, like the supposed Occupy protester, "John"), some found it odd that she was a juror for The Gelber Prize.
Given Ms. Wente’s history of attribution problems (and other ethical lapses, like the supposed Occupy protester, "John"), some found it odd that she was a juror for The Gelber Prize.
Wente: As
Ms. Freeland writes, the super-elites are often the product of a strong market
economy. But as their influence grows, they can become its opponents.
Ian
Birrell, Feb. 2013: As Freeland says, super-elites
are often the product of a strong market economy, but as their influence grows,
they can stifle it.
Birrell concludes with the observation that “there is a huge difference
between being pro-business and pro-market”, his central argument.
And then there’s this:
Wente: They
use their lobbying power to tilt the playing field, not to level it. As a
result, serious tensions emerge between a pro-market agenda and a pro-business
one.
Most
lobbying seeks to tilt the playing field in one direction or another, not to
level it…As a result, serious
tensions emerge between a pro-market agenda and a pro-business one.
Wente's last sentence is identical to Zingales.
Freeland
deserves the prize. Along with her
journalism and three kids, she finds time to produce book length works with
significant original ideas and research.
Ms. Wente? Even without kids to
raise, one might say she’s been 'leaning
back' for years.
Earlier online versions and the original print column about Chrystia Freeland’s Plutocrats incorrectly attributed a statement about tensions between a pro-market agenda and a pro-business one to Ms. Freeland. In fact, in her book, Ms. Freeland quoted University of Chicago professor Luigi Zingales from a 2009 essay with that statement.
As Ms. Freeland writes, the super-elites are often the product of a strong market economy. But as their influence grows, they can become its opponents. They claim they’re pro-market, but what they really are is pro-business. They use their lobbying power to tilt the playing field, not to level it. As a result, serious tensions emerge between a pro-market agenda and a pro-business one.
And here is how it reads now:
As Ms. Freeland writes, the super-elites are often the product of a strong market economy. But as their influence grows, they can become its opponents. They claim they’re pro-market, but what they really are is pro-business. Ms. Freeland cites University of Chicago professor Luigi Zingales as saying they use their lobbying power to tilt the playing field, not to level it. “As a result, serious tensions emerge between a pro-market agenda and a pro-business one.”
Having since found Freeland’s book, it’s also worth noting that The Globe apparently sees no need for Ms. Wente to enclose these identical sentences from it in quotation marks (as happened with a very Dana Milbankish column noted here) :
Freeland: Super-elites are often the product of a strong market economy. But as their influence grows, they can become its opponents.
Wente: The super-elites are often the product of a strong market economy. But as their influence grows, they can become its opponents.
Doesn’t look like Sylvia Stead’s New Year’s resolution lasted very long.
Update:
A correction (or something) now appears at the bottom of the Wente column
discussed above. Previously missing
quotation marks (and some rewriting appear) in the article.
That brings to at
least 10 (not counting a published letter that addressed a misrepresentation)
the number of corrections or Editor’s Notes obtained by this little blog in the
last couple years in relation to Margaret Wente. Really, it shouldn’t be that easy for
amateurs to spot problems over morning coffee.
It is also our view that there are a significant number of other
problems, equally worthy, which have been left to stand.
Here’s
what it says:
Earlier online versions and the original print column about Chrystia Freeland’s Plutocrats incorrectly attributed a statement about tensions between a pro-market agenda and a pro-business one to Ms. Freeland. In fact, in her book, Ms. Freeland quoted University of Chicago professor Luigi Zingales from a 2009 essay with that statement.
In a January
column about its corrections policy,
The Globe and Mail’s Public Editor, Sylvia Stead (whose handling of the
September 2012 Wente plagiarism affair was roundly condemned), wrote about how she
would strive to provide “greater transparency, to make it clearer
for readers to see exactly what went wrong”, adding, “humility
is a good thing for everyone in the media to embrace. So the New Year’s
resolution is to be more transparent, to better explain what went wrong so that
you don’t have to go fishing in your recycling box to figure it out.”
Unfortunately, readers again had to “go fishing” for the
print version “to see what went wrong”, and what had been changed. Here is the original text as it appeared in
Wente’s article:
As Ms. Freeland writes, the super-elites are often the product of a strong market economy. But as their influence grows, they can become its opponents. They claim they’re pro-market, but what they really are is pro-business. They use their lobbying power to tilt the playing field, not to level it. As a result, serious tensions emerge between a pro-market agenda and a pro-business one.
And here is how it reads now:
As Ms. Freeland writes, the super-elites are often the product of a strong market economy. But as their influence grows, they can become its opponents. They claim they’re pro-market, but what they really are is pro-business. Ms. Freeland cites University of Chicago professor Luigi Zingales as saying they use their lobbying power to tilt the playing field, not to level it. “As a result, serious tensions emerge between a pro-market agenda and a pro-business one.”
Having since found Freeland’s book, it’s also worth noting that The Globe apparently sees no need for Ms. Wente to enclose these identical sentences from it in quotation marks (as happened with a very Dana Milbankish column noted here) :
Freeland: Super-elites are often the product of a strong market economy. But as their influence grows, they can become its opponents.
Wente: The super-elites are often the product of a strong market economy. But as their influence grows, they can become its opponents.
Doesn’t look like Sylvia Stead’s New Year’s resolution lasted very long.
