The World of Computer Software/The World of Computer Software.iso/kingbkg.zip/KINGAIM.TXT

Text File | 1993-01-16 | 8KB | 148 lines

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The AIM REPORT is published twice monthly by Accuracy In Media,
Inc., 1275 K Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005, and is free
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 December 1990

THE MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. PLAGIARISM SCANDAL IS
BEING UNDERSTATED BY THE media, according to Ted Pappas,
assistant editor of Chronicles, a magazine published by the Rockford
Institute of Rockford, Ill.  Pappas says Chronicles will be publishing an
article about this.  It will charge that the plagiarism was "overwhelming"
and that it has been known for years.  He says the London Sunday Tele-
graph got wind of it in December 1989 but that the King Papers Project
director Clayborne Carson told the paper that it was not true that there
was any plagiarism.  Later, an American journalist connected to a college
tried to break the story, but he backed off when threatened with loss of his
job.  Pappas also charges that the National Endowment for the Humanities,
headed by Lynn Cheney, learned of the plagiarism over a year ago but did
nothing about it.  The NEH has provided major funding for the King
Papers Project, which has fallen far behind schedule in publishing King's
papers as it has tried to decide how to handle the plagiarized works.  In
the meantime, Arizonans are taking a beating for voting down a paid
holiday honoring King.

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 February 1991

          PRESS HID MARTIN LUTHER KING SCANDAL

     On Dec. 3, 1989, the London Sunday Telegraph carried an
explosive item in its "Mandrake" column concerning evidence that
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., plagiarized parts of his 1955 doctoral
dissertation at Boston University. The London paper told exactly
where King stole his material -- from a paper written by another
Boston University student, one Jack Boozer. It told how editors of
the King papers were agonizing how to release the story, which they
feared would damage King's reputation. The item ended, "The story
has not yet been published in the United States."
     Now the Sunday  Telegraph has a circulation of almost 600,000,
and it is indexed on the computerized Nexis database system which
is used by most American news organizations. It is read in the
London bureaus of American media companies.  Nonetheless, the story
lay dormant for almost eleven months, until November 1990, when the
Wall Street Journal published a definitive study of King's academic
cheating.  And now several major news outlets in the United States
are admitting they knew of the story, but did not pursue it with
enough vigor to get into print.
     These organizations include the Washington Post, the New York
Times, the New Republic, and the Journal and Constitution in King's
home town of Atlanta.  The only American paper to publish the King
story  before the Wall Street Journal article appeared was The
Spotlight, an obscure weekly  in Washington. It ran a brief item in
January 1990 based on the Sunday Telegraph story.
     Why the media reluctance to pursue a scandal that would be
embarrassing to the late civil rights leader?  In press interviews
lately several editors claimed lack of specific information about
details of King's plagiarism.  A reporter from the Washington Post
claims he was misled by an official of the King papers project who
downplayed the significance of the charge.  The editor of the New
Republic had more specific information but wanted to be careful in
doing what he called an "explosive story."   Several historians
refused to take an assignment to write the article for the New
Republic.
     We feel more than journalistic caution was at work in the de
facto suppression of the King story for almost a year.  Martin
Luther King remains a worshiped figure to the liberal media, which
has long ignored the seamy side of the preacher's life.  Only with
great reluctance did the mainstream media publish  accounts of
King's flagrant adultery.
     Frank Johnson is the British journalist who writes the
Mandrake column for the Sunday  Telegraph. He says he got the lead
on his King scoop from a British professor who had heard American
colleagues discussing the looming scandal.   He says he was not
surprised that the American media ignored his story. . As Johnson
said in a recent interview, "American reporters' inquisitiveness
and powers of perception tend to fail them on questions of race,
gender and gays."  In other words, the American media intends to
protect its own herd of sacred cows, even at the expense of honest
journalism.


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 April 1992


 Flagrant King Plagiarism Detailed
     You probably won't be reading any front page  stories about
this touchy subject, or seeing any  accounts on network
television.  But a new book  details startling information about
the extent to  which the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
plagiarized the works of other persons during his  career.  The
liberal community was shaken two  years ago with revelations that
King passed off  other people's words as his own in writing his
doctoral dissertation at Boston University.   Admirers gave King
the benefit of the doubt _  saying he meant to credit the quoted
material but  forgot, or that a young student had unwittingly
mixed up his own work with material he copied  elsewhere.
     Well, those excuses no longer hold water.  The  new book is
entitled "Voice of Deliverance, The  Language of Martin Luther
King, Jr., and Its  Sources."  Those last words _ and its sources
_   go to the core of King's chronic intellectual   dishonesty.
The author is Professor Keith D.  Miller, of Arizona State
University, who is not  unsympathetic to King.
     As Miller's book details, King systematically  plagiarized
the work of other persons throughout  his life.  Even his Nobel
Peace Prize lecture was  a rip-off.  In that speech King spoke
movingly  about a widely separated family inheriting a house  in
which they all had to live together.  An  original story?  No.
Professor Miller writes that  King cribbed it from a Florida
minister, J.  Wallace Hamilton, who had written about the same
family situation in _ we quote _ "the exact same  words."
     Miller gives numerous other examples.  A speech  about his
admiration of the Indian pacifist  Mahatma Ghandi was stolen _
again, we quote _  "word from word" from a 1957 speech by Harris
Wofford, now a U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania.   The list of
sources from which King took  unattributed material seems almost
endless _ other  ministers, the Bible, Shakespeare, educators.
     Miller is gentle with the plagiarizing King.   He argues
that King came out of a folk preacher  culture where _ quote
"preachers borrow partly  because their culture fails to define
the word as  a commodity and instead assumes that everyone
creates language and no one owns it."   Professor  Miller
continues that ministers such as King  borrowed freely from other
preachers _ "treating  sermons as shared blessings."  King, he
concluded,  simply did not understand nor appreciate the rules
of what he called "print culture."
     You perhaps remember the savagery with which  the media fell
on Senator Joe Biden of Delaware in  1988 when he was caught
cribbing a few passages  from a speech from a British politician.
Biden  was forced to drop out of the Democratic  Presidential
race.  Why doesn't the media give  similar attention to the
revelations about Martin  Luther King's plagiarism, which lasted
his entire  public life?  Washington Post writer Juan Williams
wrote in his paper's book section, "At its base  this book is an
indictment of a plagiarist."  Why  weren't those words in the
front page _ rather  than buried in the book section?  We suggest
the  media are still protecting one of their all time  favorite
sacred cows.