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Arguments about content should go here on the talk page, and not in the content. Also links should be included as such and not just chucked into the text whole. Not to mention that a lot of the statements made here probably require more textual support than they are provided with. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Therumor (talk • contribs) 14:06, June 8, 2006
Latest comment: 3 days ago3 comments2 people in discussion
There is an older relevant talk page discussion that already ironed out most of this business. The points made in that prior discussion should be consulted, especially BLP concerns. I will die on the hill that even mentioning the singular sentence from Ernest Hemingway that was copied by error into War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning is wholly unwarranted for a WP:BLP. I already made a little section on it in the book's wiki article. Additionally, there has been minimal coverage of the incident beyond 2014. There haven't been any newer allegations since Ketcham's work. Putting a big, scary "plagiarism" heading anywhere on the bio page of a writer requires more substance. Mewnst (talk) 08:58, 28 November 2023 (UTC)Reply
Hedges is, in fact, a plagiarist. The New Republic piece spells out his many ethical lapses. This wiki article actually significantly downplays just how egregious his plagiarism was.
Later adding the relevant attributions does not get Hedges off the hook. He lifted entire passages and lied about being given permission to copy said language. Clydey2Times (talk) 09:42, 30 October 2024 (UTC)Reply
Hedges simply does not fit the profile of a plagiarist. From all the scrutiny following the 2014 allegations, the charge has not stuck around to implicate his (large) corpus of original writing. There's frankly been only one new allegation over the matter since Ketcham (more on that later), which hardly follows the picture he paints of Hedges being a methodical and serial patchwork plagiarist. Consider how Hedges has written 15 books and a couple thousand articles. Over a decade on, where is the troubling behavior? Why is there nothing? In addition to the Type Media Center not substantiating the charges, The New York Times made a statement published by The Washington Free Beacon that they were "...not aware of any such concerns about Chris's work for The Times," declining to investigate Hedges. I pared out this Beacon reference because I wanted to avoid flogging Ketcham's work and keep the section from reaching an undue length, but I bring it up to point out that not many works are implicated in the kinds of lapses Ketcham looks at.
Another consideration is that this page is a WP:BLP. Negative content requires substantiated sourcing. Since hindsight has not been kind to Ketcham's strongly worded allegations, it is necessary for the page to weight the content accordingly. Ketcham also mentions (but avoids further acknowledging) a bias against Hedges because one improperly sourced Truthdig article implicated his wife's writing. Parading Ketcham alone for Hedges' errors is a mistake. I'll raise you one better: Gawker. Although this reference has the problems of being Gawker, Adam Weinstein notes something that doesn't get enough exposure. Hedges has all that original (and beautiful, and lovely) Hedgian writing to draw from, and endlessly re-uses it because he has the rights to do so. Here's a statement from Hedges that makes this clear:
"I think it is important to remember that I usually always retain ownership of my work," Hedges told Gawker. "If I used my own concepts and even words in different venues, they are still my own—that is not plagiarism. I have produced hundreds of thousands of words of printed copy. If from time to time errors slip in, I correct them when I become aware of them or they are pointed out. What matters is intent."
This is the crux of the issues with Hedges' writing and attitude with regards to the ethics confrontation. He has demonstrably written lots of genuine stuff (hence many flatly refusing the overblown charge that he's a plagiarist), and then got markedly lazy with his rehashed and republished online media presence (culminating in the plagiarism charge). This easy New Media hustle is what put food on his table at an uncertain point in his career and made Chris Ketcham hate him. It's not the sexy ethics gotcha his detractors want. And, it's why I limited the plagiarism allegation to the Truthdig section, since these issues almost exclusively showed in his self-published online works. Man needs an editor. Mewnst (talk) 11:13, 4 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
