Rare News Desk
Liberal cable news host Rachel Maddow shamelessly downplayed plagiarism claims made against her amid her crusade to publicly excoriate Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) for lifting speech content from Wikipedia and other sources.
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During her Friday broadcast, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow dismissed an article published by Rare, titled “Rachel Maddow mocked Rand Paul for plagiarism, but she’s been accused of it too,” that reports claims plagiarism against Maddow.
“[The article] presents no evidence at all of plagiarism by this show,” Maddow said on her program. “The closest it gets to accusing this show of plagiarism is noting that other people on the internet made similar historical analogies to stories in the news that we have covered.”
The first example of plagiarism Rare cited came from a blog post titled “Rachel Maddow Plagiarized My Blog!” in which the author thought a particularly unique historical analogy he used in 2010 pertaining to two oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico were remarkably similar to a report on Maddow’s program.
The second example was a post titled “A Remarkable Coincidence,” in which another blogger also noted a particularly unique historical analogy, as they described it “an obscure metaphor from the days of whaling: the so-called “Nantucket Sleigh Ride,” was also used on Maddow’s show.
Following the publication of the initial plagiary findings, Rare readers came forward with more accusation findings.
A follow-up story ran Friday, titled “More accusations of Maddow plagiarism emerge after Rare report.” Rare writes:
In a video on YouTube, Occupy Wall Street protestor Peter Brauer points out that Rachel Maddow had previously used his footage on her show without attribution, and without asking.
“This is my footage and my interview,” Breauer said. “Any person watching at home would have thought MSNBC paid a news crew to come and shoot this in the storm. They did not.”
The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines plagiarism as: “the act of using another person’s words or ideas without giving credit to that person.” The entry for “plagiarize” includes “to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own… use (another’s production) without crediting the source…”
Maddow dismissed the accusations as coming from Sen. Paul and a conservative news site, however all accusations of plagiarism Rare found came from liberal bloggers and activists sympathetic to the host’s point of view.
Maddow has still not directly addressed charges that she may have stolen someone else’s idea and claimed them as her own and instead dismissed them as simply “people on the internet” in an attempt to downplay or ignore them.
All attempts by Rare to reach Maddow for comment were unsuccessful.
Related articles
- Rachel Maddow mocked Rand Paul for plagiarism, but she’s been accused of it too (rare.go-vip.net)
- More accusations of Rachel Maddow plagiarizing (rare.go-vip.net)
- Maddow: I’m not so sure Rand Paul even knows what the word ‘plagiarism’ means (rawstory.com)
- Maddow to Rand Paul: ‘Good luck’ trying to make this plagiarism thing about me (rawstory.com)
