You know, like how things really work.

In any case I have no idea if any of that is true at all. However either it was a really big over reaction by admin, or we arn’t getting the whole story, or authors have been writing what sells.

I know I am not convincved that we are hearing at all an unbiased story. That said, it could very well be that he was totally innocent and the school admin totally over reacted and were a bunch of jerks. I know I was outraged by it initially. Or it could be that the story was told by the student and media ran with it without any confirmation from any other sources.

Corporate profits?

In the rare moments when I am desperate for something to read I still tend to favour the Globe, but less and less.   Their coverage is firmly rooted in Bay Street and the protection of old-money and power in the country.  And I am most certainly not.

In grad school I did a multi-year comparison of the Globe, the National Post and a few minor papers looking at their depiction of climate change, Kyoto and the various political, activist and business interests involved.  The Globe came out looking fairly good in comparison to the Post as far as balanced coverage, but none of them were ever taking the issue remotely seriously.  The Post routinely mocked, while the Globe mostly just ignored.  Of course, to my knowledge only about 3-4 people ever read my thesis, and now it is well out of date anyways.

I am not surprised at their dismissive attitude.  If you ever want to know what position the Globe will take, first figure out the interests of the Toronto Club (rich guys club in Toronto) and the Chamber of Commerce (specifically the Ontario Chamber of Commerce), then extrapolate.  If they have an interest, you will literally never be wrong in assuming the Globe will promote it.

I suspect that from a board’s perspective the entire organization looks like it is just a set of rules and of course any breaking of the rules should be punished.  (Unless doing so punishes them as in the case of Margaret Wente.)

Another attitude I find common from upper management is that when there is a risk due to a system vulnerability they see pursuing legal action after a breach as roughly equivalent to just fixing the vulnerability.

Don’t get me wrong, vulnerabilities are often very difficult to fix.  However, I think too often the focus is on punishing rather than fixing.

The alternative is to believe that otherwise intelligent people are as dumb and uninformed as they sound.  I don’t buy it.

Anyway, preparing my letter expressing my disapproval of their “adherence to the law should trump common-sense” editorial.

The Wente scandal I’d call bad journalism rather than plagiarism, but then I’d call Al-Kabaz’s actions trying to be helpful rather than illegal access.

The Globe makes clear that when an argument has an author’s name on it, it’s just that author’s opinion, not one supported by the paper as an institution.  It regularly publishes individual bylined essays by different writers that take completely opposite views on an issue.  This is different.

That piece is an editorial – it’s got no cited author because it was supposedly written by, and represents the opinion of, the entire editorial board.  In other words, it’s as close as a newspaper can get to an official declaration.  It was vetted by all the most senior staff at the paper.

That both helps keep the errors from propagating, and holds the G&M’s feet to the fire — if they don’t correct themselves, their competitors will correct them, which is a bigger problem.

If you really want to nail that down, add a PS to the G&M’s letter saying you’re doing this. Put it as “in the interest of accurate reporting” — again, you want to give them a chance to save face by agreeing with you, so you don’t want to come across as adversarial unless you absolutely must.