Here’s yet another high profile resignation from the staff of a newspaper: USA Today’s respected Pentagon correspondent, Tom Squitieri reportedly resigned under pressure after it was learned he had lifted quotes from other publications without identifying them as such.
According to the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz, one of the questioned pieces had a quote from a parent who’s son was killed in Iraq. The quote had appeared word for word in the Indianapolis Star last year, Kurtz writes. Another was a three sentence word-for-word quote from Sen. Evan Bayh that had appeared in the same piece.
“This is a clear violation of our sources and attribution policy, and when that happens, a reporter has to leave the paper,” Editor Ken Paulson said. “When you see a pattern of misuse of quotes, you have to take steps.”
But Squitieri’s lawyer, Joseph Cammarata, said his client spoke to all the sources or their spokesmen, even though he ended up using the old quotes. “Tom spoke to each of these people directly, verified what the sound bite was in the past and sought their permission to use it,” Cammarata said. “There was nothing inaccurate about it. . . . The suggestion that there was a pattern of misuse of quotes is not true.”
Asked about this, Paulson called it “an interesting defense” and said Squitieri had apologized to him and the staff, and had acknowledged being careless with the stories in question. He said editors found six more quotes from other publications in earlier drafts of Squitieri stories in March that did not make it into the paper, either because they were cut for space or Squitieri had deleted them from the final version.
So was this strictly a matter of a brand new tough standard in the news media? At first glance, yes. In practice (see below) no. And Kurtz raises yet another possibility that may have been in play here: retribution.
An award-winning, 16-year veteran who has reported for USA Today from around the world, Squitieri was an outspoken critic of Jack Kelley, the star correspondent ousted last year and later found to have fabricated parts of at least 20 stories over more than a decade. Richard Klein, a former Clinton administration official and friend of Squitieri, said the reporter has long felt that management has been “hostile” toward him because of his role in complaining about Kelley’s work. “He felt they looked at him as a trouble-maker and a problem in the newsroom,” Klein said.
Unlike Kelley, who both fabricated material and plagiarized other newspapers, Squitieri has not been accused of making anything up. But Paulson has taken a strict approach to ethics since he was named last year to succeed Karen Jurgensen, who was forced out when an outside panel found that a “virus of fear” in the newsroom had prevented top editors from learning of Kelley’s fabrications earlier.
“Since the days of Jack Kelley, we have a system,” Paulson said. “Whenever anybody raises questions about the credibility of our report or the conduct of our staff, we take a look at it.”
Indeed: our experience is that this was a no no.
When people do op-ed pieces, or even blog posts, quotes from other publications are often used. Sometimes you see lax standards there. But the conventional wisdom on staffer-written newspaper reports is that reporters must attribute quotations that are not garnered from their own work — and there are a variety ways of doing that.
For instance, on weblogs, you’ll see the double intent. Or someone, for instance, will say “Howard Kurtz reports” then run the quote.
But even the most highly tolerant(and some would say negligent) newspaper management team would at very least raise an eyebrow if it confirmed that quotations from sources quoted in other publications were lifted and put in without attribution in a piece that is being passed off as the original work reported and written by their paid staffer.
Two things could be at play in this case:
Kurtz notes that lifting quotes without telling readers is not limited to this case:
Despite the high-profile cases involving Kelley and Jayson Blair, the former New York Times reporter who among other things plagiarized stories involving two parents whose sons were killed in Iraq, journalists continue to use other people’s work without attribution. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last month ousted reporter Al Levine for stealing from two other papers comments by fans and area residents at two Daytona 500 races.
In other words, this case can’t simply be dismissed as corporate revenge (although there could have been some of that on some level…and we will never know). Newspaper managers seem to be trying to minimize the pain and humiliation of getting journalistic black eyes.
SOME OTHER VOICES ON THIS ISSUE:
—Ranting Profs:”My sense is that the man has an excellent reputation. I’ve seen him both on political chat shows and when the DOD press briefings has been televised, and he’s obviously very sharp. But it does seem that outlets surely are cracking down earlier and harder of late.”
—Roger Aieles:”Seems accuracy and honesty weren’t as important back in the 90s. I’m sure the firing had nothing whatsoever to do with the subjects of Squit’s reports: the Bush war dead and the Administration’s grossly negligent preparations for war.”
—Dr. James Joyner:”A shame. Squitieri’s reputation was sterling and he was a solid reporter. Still, I failed undergraduate students for plagiarism less aggregious than this.”
—Arguing With Signposts:”Reading between the lines, it seems Squitieri called the sources and attempted to get better quotes than the ones other media outlets had obtained. Failing that, he decided to use quotes other people had obtained. But you wouldn’t know that from reading the stories. And that’s why this is something that deserves dismissal. The stories would imply that it was Squitieri who did the difficult work of getting a priceless quote from a source, not another reporter.”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.