The Montreal Gazette apologized to its readers after finding out that its sports columnist, Paul Carbray, had plagiarized, Poynter’s Craig Silverman wrote.
Carbray’s column has been ended, according to the March 5 editors’ note. According to the note:
“A check of columns we published over the previous two months turned up two other cases where, again, extended passages were taken from articles and blogs that had been published online by other media outlets. The passages were repeated in the Gazette columns with very minor changes and no attribution.”
Silverman noted that “Carbray used to be a copy editor for The Gazette’s sports section, and the paper reports it has published his soccer column for 15 years.” Silverman called for the Gazette to review Carbray’s work to “see how far back this goes” since the Gazette already found three examples of plagiarism “in the past two months alone.”
We wrote to the Gazette’s managing editor Catherine Wallace asking about any further review of Carbray’s previous work, how the Gazette was indicating the plagiarism on any online articles and who tipped the newspaper off to the plagiarism. Wallace told iMediaEthics by e-mail:
“The note to readers in today’s paper and on montrealgazette.com said everything that we want to say about the case. The only thing I’ll add is that articles generally stay on our website for only three months; we have taken down any columns that were still live.”
A Google search of Carbray’s name indicates his columnist page on the Gazette’s website has been taken down. At least one of his articles — this Jan. 9, 2012 article — was still published as of March 5 at 9 PM EST.
Carbray told Open File Montreal that he is”well aware that plagiarism is a journalistic mortal sin” and that “in 15 years of doing a column, my standards slipped on these occasions and I regret that extremely.”
He noted that “Ultimately, there is no excuse” and that “the fault was of method mostly, not intention,” according to Open File.
We wrote last week when Maine newspaper the South Portland-Cape Elizabeth Sentry apologized after finding out that its reporter plagiarized. See our report on that plagiarism issue here and all our stories on plagiarism here.