My Globe and Mail colleague James Adams reports on an Editor's Note that appeared in Friday's National Post, the Globe's chief competition for the title of Canada's national newspaper:
A columnist with the National Post has lost her assignment with the newspaper after it learned that a column she wrote in 2002 contained five sentences that should have been attributed to a 2001 article published in a U.S. magazine . . .
…. It … was the second time that the Post had to deal with allegations that Ms. Nickson had used unattributed quotes ….
Before the controversies erupted, Ms. Nickson took a hard line on plagiarism.
In a March 15, 2002, column in the Post headlined ” 'Plagiarism' is 'stealing.' End of story,” [Nickson] said: “The original voice is
irreplaceable, and unmistakable, and should never be overrun in desperation. You deserve to get caught, because what you are selling is
that perfect distillation of you up against raw material, and that drags us out of the cave, our narrow little tribes, into the light.”
A given idea is an idea moreover