While Loveland residents looking to publish a letter to the editor of the Reporter-Herald often face a heavy editorial pen, verification of authenticity and questions regarding their facts – the policy for the editors friends on Loveland’s City Council is quite different.
Look at this morning’s paper and you will find a “guest column” by Loveland Mayor Gene Pielin. The only problem is he is not the author. He is falsely listed as the “Guest Columnist” accompanied by a picture of his smiling face and his city title Mayor Gene Pielin.
Would you believe that Girish Balachandran, General Manager of Alameda Power & Telecom, in Alameda California wrote an identical column for the Alameda Sun newspaper? How about Jackie Flowers who manages a public power utility in Idaho Falls also miraculously finding the identical words for her commentary in the Idaho Falls utility newsletter.
In fact, Mayor Gene Pielin never wrote the guest column published in today’s Loveland Reporter-Herald.
The “column” is a mass distributed newsletter insert distributed to promote this week as Public Power Week. It was prepared in-advance and sent to hundreds of public utilities around the country for insertion in utility newsletters and local newspapers.
Most city Mayors have too much integrity to print someone else’s words and claim to be the author. That is why most of the reprinting of the false column was done in utility newsletters or published in the name of utility managers instead of local politicians.
Unfortunately, Pielin leads a group of Loveland politicians who are happily scripted on topics they barely understand. Leadership is not mimicking the words of others and claiming them to be your own.
Loveland desperately needs a new independent city council with integrity.
The Reporter-Herald? Guilty of plagiarism? Say it ain’t so.
There us really nothing to say but wow. Are they really all that dishonest?
http://www.mishawakautilities.com/comm/102002/
(second item)
http://www.tradingpostnewspapers.com/Articles-i-2008-10-05-81282.113117_A_moment_with_the_mayor.html
Another:
http://www.tradingpostnewspapers.com/Articles-i-2008-10-05-81282.113117_A_moment_with_the_mayor.html
The level of corruption in Loveland is staggering — McWhinney, the “City Council”, the “newspaper”. It’s like the entire town has been sold out. And so much of it has happened in plain sight. How can this happen in America in the 21st century? … Will the people of Loveland ever throw these bums out?
Most interesting.
This really isn’t a case, Jack, of plagiarism — it’s a newspaper being duped. Unless, of course, the mayor told the managing editor beforehand that the column was a canned commentary. That would be even worse, since readers weren’t given that information.
Which would lead directly to Carl’s question.
Somebody’s got some explaining to do. Either the mayor (endorsed for the job by the newspaper) or the ME of the newspaper.
I’ll take 10-1 odds this mess won’t be mentioned.
Unwillingness to attach full or real names to opinions has become common practice in these net-days/daze. Attaching your name to what is apparently corporate-produced propaganda is another kettle of fish. Especially if you’re the top elected official of those reading what you supposidly came up with on your own.
Honestly, it is dishonest. To the core.
Here are a couple of simple questions: How did this happen? And why? Beyond that, are there advertising dollars involved?
Tony Benjamin,
Loveland
The Mayor of Loveland put his name on something he did not write. The Mayor of Loveland took credit for something he did NOT write. That is theft. That is a lie. That is fraud. That is plagiarism, and if the editor of The Reporter-Herald, Ken Amundson, is obviously so lazy he can’t do the leg work required to see this for what it is he should be fired immediately for incompetence.
But that won’t happen, because although the publisher of The Reporter-Herald, Ed Lehman, likes to hold others to high standards that include responsibility and accountability, he doesn’t hold his workers – as he calls them – to the same high standards. As a result this crap is what is passed off as professional journalism.
And it is but one example of why the news media is in the mess it is – because of permissive employers and lazy editors.
According to the Merriam-Webster OnLine Dictionary, to “plagiarize” means
1. to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own
2. to use (another’s production) without crediting the source
3. to commit literary theft
4. to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source
According to the definition above Pielin is guilty of at least the final 3.
No public response from Ken Amundson or Ed Lehman regarding this act of plagiarism.
Don’t expect one, either.
Way to go, lovelandpolitics! Again, your little website & tiny staff have scooped the traditional media in town. In past eras, society held public officials to higher standards, because malfeasance was rooted out and publicized by a skeptical media. Today, the entrenched newspaper in town seems to wink at such behavior by public officials, almost going so far as to raise the rug under which inconvenient truths can be swept.
Thanks. We did speak with another Loveland councilman who is also a friend of Pielin on Monday. According to this one source, Pielin is telling his friends and colleagues he offered the editorial to the paper as “good information” but never requested it be printed in his name.
We don’t buy the story. The Loveland Reporter-Herald is very unlikely to publish anything in anyone’s name they don’t believe is authentic. Politics aside, the risk for them in doing that is just too high.
We understand he did submit the article to the paper under his name and they simply failed to fact check it. The Loveland Reporter-Herald is only guilty of trusting the Mayor of this town more than the citizens. The article simply demonstrates how their trust is misplaced.
The “column” has parts that are written in the first person — “I hope you’ll join me …”
So it’s extremely difficult to give any credence to the mayor’s claim that he didn’t submit the thing under the false pretense that it was his own work.