the new york times ran a front page story this morning about my boss, the u.s. ambassador to the united nations zalmay khalilzad, and his ties to the guy running for president of pakistan (see story in blog below). the times had been working on the story with multiple journalists for several days…..you can imagine my surprise when i arrived into work this morning to see that bloomberg news had cut and pasted the nytimes story into a bloomberg news wire story – running it as their own but crediting the nytimes sources. bloomberg news was even quoting me even though no one from bloomberg had ever called.

i called the international news editor, edward demarco, to complain. to my shock he said “oh, yeah – we ran a lift from the new york times”. i thought, “a lift”? there is a whole terminology to plagerism and lazy journalism??

as edward at bloomberg news explained it to me, they rountinely go through “credible news papers like the new york times and the washington post” to lift stories they missed. they just cut and paste – - no questions asked.

i couldn’t believe they did it let alone admitted it.

i guess i am just learning that reporters copy other reporters when they didn’t have time to do their own research……

if they were in any other profession they would be fired for plagiarism. remember joe biden’s speech in 1988?