Reidblog [The Reid Report blog]

NEW YORK Universal Press Syndicate has requested a copy of a report about Ann Coulter's alleged plagiarism, according to a post on the TPMmuckraker.com blog. Meanwhile, in her latest column, Coulter has hit back at the newspaper that aired the latest plagiarism charges -- but did not refute them.

The report was conducted by John Barrie, creator of the iThenticate plagiarism-probing system. A New York Post story this Sunday said Barrie found several examples of alleged plagiarism in Coulter's new "Godless" book as well as in her Universal column.

Universal Director of Communications Kathie Kerr, when contacted by E&P, said she called Barrie on Wednesday morning and left him a message asking him for a copy of his report. "Once we see a copy of the report, we'll be happy to comment on the findings," she added. "We take allegations of plagiarism very seriously." E&P has also left a message for Barrie, who appeared on MSNBC late Wesnesday.

There he explained that the Post had asked his company to put Coulter's book and the past 12 months of columns through his program. But his staffers stopped before completing the task--"we gave up after awhile, we'd seen enough," he explained. The many examples added up to "advanced plagiarism," he said, the kind of stuff that would "flunk any English student."

Coulter wrote: "Once considered a legitimate daily, the Post has been reduced to tabloid status best known for Page Six's breathless accounts of Paris Hilton's latest ruttings, and headlines like 'Vampire Teen -- H.S. Girl Is Out for Blood.' How crappy a newspaper is the Post? Let me put it this way: It's New York's second-crappiest paper."

Of course, the Post could hardly be "reduced to tabloid status" since it is, in fact, a tabloid.

July 2, 2006 -- Conservative scribe Ann Coulter cribbed liberally in her latest book, "Godless," according to a plagiarism expert.
John Barrie, the creator of a leading plagiarism-recognition system, claimed he found at least three instances of what he calls "textbook plagiarism" in the leggy blond pundit's "Godless: the Church of Liberalism" after he ran the book's text through the company's digital iThenticate program.

He also says he discovered verbatim lifts in Coulter's weekly column, which is syndicated to more than 100 newspapers, including the Fort Lauderdale (Fla.) Sun-Sentinel and Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle.

Barrie, CEO of iParadigms, told The Post that one 25-word passage from the "Godless" chapter titled "The Holiest Sacrament: Abortion" appears to have been lifted nearly word for word from Planned Parenthood literature published at least 18 months before Coulter's 281-page book was released.

A separate, 24-word string from the chapter "The Creation Myth" appeared about a year earlier in the San Francisco Chronicle with just one word change - "stacked" was changed to "piled."

Another 33-word passage that appears five pages into "Godless" allegedly comes from a 1999 article in the Portland (Maine) Press Herald.

Meanwhile, many of the 344 citations Coulter includes in "Godless" "are very misleading," said Barrie, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, where he specialized in pattern recognition.

"They're used purely to try and give the book a higher level of credibility - as if it's an academic work. But her sloppiness in failing to properly attribute many other passages strips it of nearly all its academic merits," he told The Post.

Barrie says he also ran Coulter's Universal Press columns from the past 12 months through iThenticate and found similar patterns of cribbing.

Her Aug. 3, 2005, column, "Read My Lips: No New Liberals," about U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter, includes six passages, ranging from 10 to 48 words each, that appeared 15 years earlier in the same order in an L.A. Times article, headlined "Liberals Leery as New Clues Surface on Souter's Views."

But nowhere in that column does she mention the L.A. Times or the story's writer, David G. Savage.

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Tags: Ann Coulter, Politics, Bush, Coulter, Media, conservative, GOP, It/'s a man, baby