Stepping Into The Mess

Ben Domenech was hired by the Washington Post to blog the conservative take on current events. Liberals and leftists immediately swarmed and started making a combination of baseless accusations and claims that Domenech plagarized texts over the course of his career.

It's one thing to be smeared for saying things that you didn't say or taking things out of context to try and get a guy fired, but quite another when you're talking about defending charges of plagarism.

Domenech lifted materials originally written by others without providing due documentation, citation, or other means of providing credit.

In the past 24 hours, we learned of allegations that Ben Domenech plagiarized material that appeared under his byline in various publications prior to washingtonpost.com contracting with him to write a blog that launched Tuesday.

An investigation into these allegations was ongoing, and in the interim, Domenech has resigned, effective immediately.

When we hired Domenech, we were not aware of any allegations that he had plagiarized any of his past writings. In any cases where allegations such as these are made, we will continue to investigate those charges thoroughly in order to maintain our journalistic integrity.

Plagiarism is perhaps the most serious offense that a writer can commit or be accused of. Washingtonpost.com will do everything in its power to verify that its news and opinion content is sourced completely and accurately at all times.

As such, his dismissal from that blogging position at the WaPo was appropriate and a just result. He should not be able to profit from the words and ideas of others.

And for those who are wondering how I cite to others on this and any other blog I post on, here's a handy dandy guide.

If there's indented text, that means that the text was copied from some other source, the citation to which is either from the title or the link that appears directly above such text.