Republican Plagiarism Comes Back in a Surge

Since last fall, I’ve been following a particular passage written by a Republican Party P.R. hack, and sent out fraudulently to newspapers around the country. The newspapers are lied to when the name of a local resident is supplied as the author, falsely indicating an independently written opinion. For a year and a half, the people GOP.com have been asking people to send out fake letters, pretending the following words are their own:

President Bush has a clear plan for victory in Iraq that begins with training Iraqi forces so they can defend their country and fight the terrorists. We are making tremendous progress towards this objective. Earlier this year, Iraqi forces led the fight in clearing out terrorists during the crucial battle of Tal Afar, with U.S. troops in a supporting role, and every day, Iraqis are taking more control of the situation on the ground. Withdrawing from Iraq, as some Democrats in Washington propose, would send a dangerous signal to our enemies that we cut and run when the going gets tough. President Bush is offering a clear strategy to win, not a political quick fix.

If the stakes for our civic health and the legitimacy of our national policy debates weren’t so important, I’d call the continued use of this letter silly. The “crucial battle of Tal Afar” hasn’t taken place “earlier this year” since December of 2005, and if anything about Iraq is clear, it’s that since the fake letter was written the Iraqis have not been taking more control of the situation on the ground — unless by Iraqis you mean insurgents and sectarian fighters. The continued dissemination of this letter to the nation’s newspapers is not silly; it is morally absurd and ethically corrosive.

The following are letters to the editor with the above text published just within the past two weeks, under false claims of authorship by a local citizen:

• Wisconsin’s Journal Times, January 23 2007, authorship falsely claimed by Mark Smith of Butler.
• The Daily Times of Ottawa, Illinois, January 26 2007, authorship falsely claimed by Todd Powell Sr. of Marseilles.
• Mississippi’s Sun Herald, January 26 2007, authorship falsely claimed by Dawn Adams of Ocean Springs.
• Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, January 28 2007, authorship falsely claimed by Cornelius J. McKenna Sr. of Ontario in next-door Wayne County.
• West Virginia’s Bluefield Daily Telegraph, January 29 2007, authorship falsely claimed by Michael Hawkins of Bluefield.
• Delaware’s Cape Gazette (link no longer in service), January 30 2007, authorship falsely claimed by Kim Rodriguez of Lewes.
• Alabama’s Decatur Daily, January 31 2007, authorship falsely claimed by Marylou Chapman of Huntsville.
• Cary News, January 31 2007, authorship falsely claimed by Cheryl L. Bell of Cary.
• The Pantagraph, February 1 2007, authorship falsely claimed by Laura Pusateri of El Paso.
• Colorado’s Douglas County News Press, February 2 2007, authorship falsely claimed by Larry R. Stockmoe of Castle Rock.
• Illinois’ Kane County Chronicle, February 3 2007, authorship falsely claimed by James Froisland of St. Charles.

Some media outlets, thankfully, are catching on. Take, for instance, the News Tribune of Tacoma Washington. NT Editorialist Cheryl Tucker didn’t just reject the Republican letter fraud she received. Tucker outed it with righteous sass on January 25, 2007:

Betty, Betty, Betty…

Betty in Puyallup might be disappointed, but we’re not printing the letter to the editor she sent in Wednesday.

Why? Because she didn’t write it. The Republican National Committee did. I know because a few minutes earlier we received an identical letter from Richard in Olympia. A quick use of the Google search engine reveals that the letter was picked up word for word from the RNC Web site. I suspect we’ll get several more of these letters in the next few days, all exactly alike, all signed by a local person.

Occasionally we get suckered by one of these letters – which we call “turf.” It doesn’t happen very often; these letters are usually so perfect and so … lifeless … that they don’t “feel” real.

One of our basic rules for letters to the editor is that letters have to be writers’ own work. If they just pick up a letter from the RNC or MoveOn.org, it’s plagiarism. We can get fired for doing that; they just get their letter sent into the electronic trash can.

Here’s the offending letter. See what I mean by “lifeless”?

Tucker is a professional who’s done her job. The editors of these other newspapers either couldn’t take a minute to do a quick google search of an already suspicious letter, or were too ignorant to know that the battle of Tal Afar was in 2005, or knew about the problems with this letter but just didn’t care. This letter isn’t just about the lack of ethics of the Republican Party. It’s about a sloppy journalistic profession that lets itself be turned into a tool of partisan hackery.