Margaret Wente and the “elites”

Here's Margaret Wente writing a puff piece about billionaire Peter Munk:

Wente: “’I arrived in this place not speaking the language, not knowing a dog,’ he says. He was 18 – an alien, a foreigner, a Jew in a funny-looking suit. In Europe, people were living in the ruins, like rats”. 



Hmnn, that’s a quite a contrast from this bio in the Globe by Andy Hoffman, in April 2008:



“He was born Nov. 8, 1927 in Budapest, Hungary to a Jewish family rich with real-estate holdings...” 



(The article informs us that Munk’s family spent much of that fortune to escape to Switzerland where life wasn’t so bad).

But 
“young Peter failed to gain admission to a top university and in 1948 it was decided that he would be sent to Toronto for his education, and live with his aunt and uncle...Peter and his friends met to consider his fate in a Zurich café. He didn't want to leave Switzerland. ‘In Zurich it was gorgeous. There were bars and we could drive down to the casino and see the dancing girls. It was a cultured, civilized place,’ he recalls.”



So Munk may ‘not have known a dog’ in Toronto, but he did know his relatives. And while Wente wants us to think the poor man was scurrying around the ruins with rats, he was apparently living the high life in Zurich’s bars and casinos.

Attribution Correction?

After bringing this to the attention of Globe editors, the following notice appeared in today’s print version, (June 3, Page A2). Now, why not the rest?

The words “Americans…are fighting and dying, while the Afghans by and large stand by and do nothing to help them” in the Focus section of March 12 should have been attributed to Dexter Filkins in the New York Times.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.