(DailyChive.com) – On Monday, The New York Times acknowledged that Vice President Kamala Harris had copied multiple sections in her 2009 book. However, the paper downplayed the issue, calling the plagiarism “not serious” and noting it only involved a small portion of the book.
The plagiarism was first uncovered by conservative journalist Christopher Rufo, who based his findings on research by Dr. Stefan Weber, an Austrian expert in plagiarism studies. Rufo published his report on Substack, pointing out that Harris copied about 500 words out of the 65,000-word book. The book was co-written while she was serving as San Francisco’s district attorney.
According to The Times, none of the copied passages stole the original thoughts or ideas of other writers, which would have been a more serious offense. Instead, Harris’s book reused descriptions of programs and statistics without proper attribution. Jonathan Bailey, a plagiarism expert and publisher of Plagiarism Today, told reporters the mistakes didn’t seem significant given the overall length of the book.
Yet, The Times seemed more interested in shifting attention from Harris to Rufo himself. The article, titled “Conservative Activist Seizes on Passages From Harris Book,” focused heavily on Rufo’s role in exposing plagiarism cases. The paper suggested that Rufo and other conservative writers have targeted academics, many of whom are Black scholars working in diversity studies. It even hinted that some see these efforts as racially motivated.
Conservative voices had predicted this type of reaction. Breitbart’s John Nolte argued that the mainstream media would either ignore the story or dismiss it as a Republican-manufactured controversy. Similarly, Sen. J.D. Vance, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, predicted that Harris’s supporters would downplay the issue by saying she only copied minor parts of her book.
Interestingly, reports suggest that some of the copied content came from Wikipedia, a source widely known to be unreliable for professional writing. Typically, when The Times covers plagiarism, it doesn’t excuse the lack of proper credit as a mere “error”—it calls it plagiarism outright. But in this case, the rules seem to bend.
The incident raises questions about double standards in media coverage. If Harris were a Republican, would the same leniency apply?
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