Wednesday, May 20, 2009  Did The NYT Give Maureen Dowd A Free
Pass On A Plagiarism Charge? Looks That Way.  The story's over,
folks. Maureen Dowd is back imagining childish chitchat between
Cheney and Rumsfeld over a bottle of Brunello. Josh Marshall,
the blogger whose words she "accidentally" appropriated for her
Sunday column, has declared the NYT's one-sentence correction
"the end of it." Press critics -- those that bothered to write
about the accusations against Dowd that surfaced late Sunday
afternoon -- generally see the incident as small potatoes in the
grand scheme of journalistic transgressions.  But we don't think
the story's over, or ought to be. We believe the NYT has given
its star columnst a free pass on an incident that would have
potentially cost another reporter their job -- the act,
intentional or not, of allowing another writer's words to appear
in print under your byline. Not to get all legal or anything,
but this is important: plagiarism is not an act that requires
intent. Otherwise we'd