Tart Cider: Tears of plaige

July 24, 2005

Tears of plaige

Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times, July 3, 2005:

In 1993, Portland became the first local government in the United States to adopt a strategy to deal with climate change.

Janet Bagnall, Montreal Gazette, July 13, 2005:

In 1993, Portland became the first local government in the U.S. to adopt a strategy to fight climate change.

Kristof:

This was achieved partly by a major increase in public transit, including two light rail lines and a streetcar system. The city has also built 750 miles of bicycle paths, and the number of people commuting by foot or on bicycle has increased 10 percent.

Portland offers all city employees either a $25-per-month bus pass or car pool parking. Private businesses are told that if they provide employees with subsidized parking, they should also subsidize bus commutes.

The city has also offered financial incentives and technical assistance to anyone constructing a ''green building'' with built-in energy efficiency.

Then there are innumerable little steps, such as encouraging people to weatherize their homes. Portland also replaced the bulbs in the city's traffic lights with light-emitting diodes, which reduce electricity use by 80 percent and save the city almost $500,000 a year.

Bagnall:

To its public transit system, for instance, the city added two light rail lines and a streetcar system. It built 1,200 kilometres of bicycle paths. The number of people commuting by foot or on bicycle increased 10 per cent.

Portland offers all city employees either a $25-a-month U.S. bus pass or car-pool parking. Private businesses that provide employees subsidized parking are urged to subsidize employees who use public transit as well.

Portland also offered financial incentives and technical help to individuals or businesses in the construction of a "green building," one with built-in energy efficiencies.

Portland replaced the light bulbs in the traffic-light system with light-emitting diodes. They reduce electricity use by 80 per cent, which adds up to a savings of 2,300 tons of carbon dioxide and almost $500,000 U.S. a year.

Bagnall apologizes in today's Gazette (via Spector):

In my column of July 13 on the Bush administration's position on the Kyoto Protocol, "U.S. city shows benefits of going green," I used several paragraphs of text from a July 3 column by the New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.

My use of the paragraphs, which listed steps taken by Portland, Ore., to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, as well as a quote from the mayor of Portland, was inadvertent.

I had printed out Kristof's column in the same text type as The Gazette's, along with other information, including notes I had made several weeks earlier based on the original source both Kristof and I consulted, a June 2005 progress report on Portland's action plan.

Writing my column, I thought I was transcribing my own notes, when in fact I transcribed his fact summary and quote.

However unintentional, an incident such as this can damage the credibility of the newspaper, of which I am mindful. I apologize to Nicholas Kristof, to my colleagues at The Gazette, and to my readers.

I'll buy that. The single best piece of evidence supporting Bagnall's version of events is the "2,300 tons of carbon dioxide" in the last sentence quoted above. That isn't in Kristof's column. It comes, rather, from the City of Portland's aforementioned "Global Warming Progress Report", as does most of the factual information in both Kristof's and Bagnall's columns. As such, the "my notes got mixed up with Kristof's column" explanation rings true.

Gazette ed-in-chief Andrew Phillips comments (my emphasis):

Whatever the cause, this should not have happened. Taking other writers' work without attribution amounts to plagiarism, a serious infringement of the ethical rules that guide our work. On behalf of The Gazette, I apologize to you, our readers, for this lapse in our professional standards.

Actions have consequences. In this case, Bagnall has been formally reprimanded and her column will not appear for several weeks.

While plagiarism is serious, every case is different and must be handled according to the individual circumstances. In this case, it involves a journalist with a long and previously unblemished professional record.

Sounds about right to me. I don't think a single error such as this should be grounds for dismissal when it's clearly unintentional. If it happens again, then absolutely. And if it had been intentional, well, one shot should kill. It's nice to see Bagnall and the Gazette adopting the classy, full-disclosure approach. A less honest, less respectable alternative would have been, for instance, to offer a ridiculous defence, harass the person who pointed it out and threaten him with legal action. But that would have reflected very badly on the Montreal Gazette, and on Bagnall's heretofore exemplary reputation.

(Zerbisias was way ahead of me.)

(UPDATE August 9: It just gets worse for Ms Bagnall.)

Posted by Chris Selley at July 24, 2005 12:12 AM

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