I once again have been receiving a rash of emails from people claiming that CatholicVote is censoring their comments, so I went over there to take a look at what comments have been published. As I was perusing the blog posts, I came across one that seemed remarkably familiar. I had read about the restoration Leonardo da Vinci’s The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne last week in the New York Times. Not only was the article on CatholicVote that was written by Jennifer Roche about the same subject, the language was also remarkably familiar.
Bloggers often quote large portions of articles and re-blog them in order to share them with their readers or provide comment. It’s customary to link to the original article when doing such a thing and provide credit, I found no such link on CatholicVote’s website.
Notice the similarities in the article:
New York Times:
Now a battle is raging over the painting’s restoration, pitting the museum and some experts who defend the project against others who believe the cleaning of the 500-year-old canvas has been too aggressive and may already have caused irreversible damage
CatholicVote:
Some painting conservators claim that it has been seriously damaged by over-cleaning. Recently, the work was at the center of an art debate about the 500-year old painting which hangs at the Louvre in Paris. Some art conservators claim that the 500-year-old canvas has been too aggressively cleaned and that the damage is irreversible.
New York Times:
Two of France’s leading art experts have resigned from the advisory committee supervising the painting’s restoration to protest the way it has been conducted, according to art specialists have spoken to them.
CatholicVote:
Two of France’s leading art experts have already resigned from the advisory committee supervising the painting’s restoration to protest the way it has been conducted.
New York Times:
The cleaning of the painting was completed in mid-December, leaving a brighter, crowd-pleasing image.
CatholicVote:
The cleaning of the painting was completed in mid-December, leaving a brighter, crowd-pleasing image
It’s not necessary to go on, although there are numerous similarities in the articles. The article written by Jennifer Roche on CatholicVote, published a few days after the one from the New York Times, was clearly plagiarized.
Update 1/30/2012: 19 days after publishing the article, CatholicVote has updated it to include a link to the original article and a note admitting that ”interview details for this blog post were taken from the NYTimes”. Of course. that’s not true either, the majority of the article was plagiarized, not just the “interview details.” Also, as would be customary, no note was left on the blog indicating that the page was updated with additional text and a link to the article and on what date. Changing a blog post without stating that it was changed and for what reason is not only sneaky, it’s lying and dishonest.
