Borges a plagiarizer?

[upstater1]

No big deal. Every Sunday notes column in the country does the same thing. That is why this Borges notes column and every other have this at the bottom:

"material from personal interviews, wire services, other beat writers, and league and team sources was used in this report."

It is a big deal. That's plagiarism and copyright infringement. You can use the information. You just can't use it word for word.

 

[upstater1]

He can't plagiarize the whole article, but he can use snippets, especially with the disclaimer. I don't think he copied enough.
EDIT


I could be wrong. He's a good plagiarizer and changed enough I didn't see it side by side.

I'm in grad school and we have to take a tutorial on plagiarism.

That's what it is.

I know the fair use rule like the back of my hand. Any time you use a snippet word for word from another article, you have to:

1. use no more than 10% of the entire article
2. attribute the source and cite it
3. critique the source

You can't simply appropriate it without citing it, and even if you do cite it, you have to provide commentary on the source.

Borges violated copyright and journalism ethics here.

 

[pats1]

Remember Ken Powers?

(For those of those who don't, he got fired from the Worcester T&G a few years ago for plagiarizing a Peter King article.)

 

[NEPat]

I'm sure Bruce at BSMW will have something on this, if it turns out there's no legitimate excuse for the copying...

Edit: Although, maybe the disclaimer really is enough. You say no way upstater1? I just think that Borges can't be that stupid, the disclaimer must cover him.

 

[Major **********]

Someone should send it to Bruce Allen of the BSMW.

 

[pats1]

Someone should send it to Bruce Allen of the BSMW.

It has been done.

 

[Kdo5]

Borges is such a turd!!!!! I was listening to him getting ripped on WEEI by some callers. The guy has deserved to be fired for many years. And this time he just plagerized. That is against the law. Borges is a stinking article thief.

Ofcourse I am extremely happy at this stupid move. Hopefully this story gets out to everyone.

 

[borg]

ColdHardFootballFacts has responded with a swift pen...

http://www.coldhardfootballfacts.com/Article.php?Page=1357&Category=1

 

[patchick]

I have to say, this stuns me. Borges has always struck me as a bitter guy who reveled in playing the villain...but at the end of the day, an excellent writer and a professional. This is student-newspaper-level crap, an astonishingly dumb move in the age of electronic journalism.

No disclaimer in the world lets you incorporate large portions of an article from another newspaper into your own work without citing it. What's next, "material from other historical and literary sources was used in this novel" and I publish Cold Mountain?

 

[Grogan's Heroes]

Oh, this is great! Our long national nightmare may soon be over.

 

[NE_PATS_FAN_54]

someone should send that to PFT.

Even if he says that at the bottom of his articles he's a jerk and it just makes him look like a bigger jerk.


This dude is just like any troll on a messageboard (like the moron yesterday talking trash about Tedy)
He just wants to get a response and piss people off.

why should they still send it PFT even if you know its not plagarized. this probably isnt the first time someone at the globe has done this, or at any other newspaper for fact

 

[RayClay]

I know the fair use rule like the back of my hand. Any time you use a snippet word for word from another article, you have to:

1. use no more than 10% of the entire article
2. attribute the source and cite it
3. critique the source

You can't simply appropriate it without citing it, and even if you do cite it, you have to provide commentary on the source.

Borges violated copyright and journalism ethics here.

Sounds right to me. I remembered enough to pass the tutorial. LOL His use of large sections where he just rearranged words is also plagiarism.

 

[RayClay]

I'm sure Bruce at BSMW will have something on this, if it turns out there's no legitimate excuse for the copying...

Edit: Although, maybe the disclaimer really is enough. You say no way upstater1? I just think that Borges can't be that stupid, the disclaimer must cover him.

Upstater is definitely right. I just didn't know the specifics. He basically appropriated almost that whole article and passed it off as his own.

Even the parts where he changed a few words would be considered plagiarism in the tutorial I took especially given the scope of his borrowing.

 

[Boston Jay]

What a turd.

He needs to be flushed.

 

[Keegs]

why should they still send it PFT even if you know its not plagarized. this probably isnt the first time someone at the globe has done this, or at any other newspaper for fact

b/c PFT was talking about how much he sucks earlier.

ummm and because it's plagiarism.

 

[upstater1]

I'm sure Bruce at BSMW will have something on this, if it turns out there's no legitimate excuse for the copying...

Edit: Although, maybe the disclaimer really is enough. You say no way upstater1? I just think that Borges can't be that stupid, the disclaimer must cover him.

This is how I make a living. I write articles. If I did what Borges did (and was caught, you have to be caught, because people do it) then I'd lose my job.

For one, the copyright holder can sue. It doesn't happen often, but they can. Second, the newspaper has ethical standards, so they can dismiss him for plagiarism. There are two issues here. One is plagiarism (this case is clearly plagiarism). That's a moral/ethical mistake. You can get fired, be reprimanded. It's up to his bosses. Then there's copyright violation. You HAVE to cite the source, or else it's like stealing and claiming it as your own. That's a legal violation.

I have been to hell in back with the national copyright clearinghouse multiple times. Not because I wanted to cheat, but because it took them 3 months to release the rights to something a while back, and I was very willing to pay the original owner for them. But they stalled me until I missed my deadline. In the meantime, I learned everything to do with copyright law.

 

[Fencer]

I'm not going to read the thread right now, but in case this was mentioned -- Will McDonough apparently innovated what Borges is doing now. Perhaps even for any city, any sport. At least, that's the impression I got from the reporting at the time of his death.

That said -- I hope people bombard the Globe ombudsperson with examples, not just this one but as many others as possible. At a minimum, it will put pressure on him. This kind of regurgitated reporting was more genuinely valuable pre-Internet; now it's simply lazy.

 

[JPatriot]

As several previous posters have pointed out, he's done exactly what dozens of other writers of "notes columns" do. There's actually a service available that culls and sends out the best tidbits from around the league to the media.

I've gotten it for an NFL radio show that I do. It usually has 10 stories that appear verbatim in notes columns from around the country.

Like him, dislike him, but Borges didn't do anything wrong on this one.

 

[Ghost of Ben Dreith]

I hope Borges doesn't get fired. A suspension or reprimand at most.

If Borges goes, what are some of you all going to do? I think hatred of Borges keeps some of you alive and posting as much as some of those 90 year olds in New England were being kept alive in hopes of seeing the Sox win a World Series.

These boards would be a much quieter place without Mr. Borges to kick around.

 

[Major **********]

I hope Borges doesn't get fired. A suspension or reprimand at most.

If Borges goes, what are some of you all going to do? I think hatred of Borges keeps some of you alive and posting as much as some of those 90 year olds in New England were being kept alive in hopes of seeing the Sox win a World Series.

These boards would be a much quieter place without Mr. Borges to kick around.

I'll manage just fine.
Thank you very much.