In February, a provocative column about abortion ran on our opinion page. If you were to look for it on our Web site today, however, it does not appear in our archives. In fact, there are now several stories that have been stricken from our Web site since the discovery that parts of each, all by the same author, a desk editor, were plagiarized.
In the case of the column, the entire ending was nearly identical to a Planned Parenthood blog that ran just days earlier, while another sentence could be found word for word in a story on MSNBC.com. To say the least, everyone at The Spectrum has been shocked by this turn of events. The editor accused of this plagiarism was suspended shortly after we began to find more examples -- five so far, all this semester except for one from spring 2005. On Wednesday, the editor was dismissed from the paper for the remainder of the year.
Since the situation with this editor is still ongoing, I will not divulge a name here, but that is not important. What is important is that we assure you, our readers, that our commitment to accuracy and ethical journalism is now stronger than it ever has been. Our investigation will be thorough and we are starting the process of tightening our plagiarism policy.
Along with the column, we found similar examples of plagiarism in a January article on the trial of a UB art professor, an April Fool's Day Facebook story, last week's Spring Fest preview (which we caught before print), and an article last spring on the detention of Muslim students at the U.S. border.
The Spectrum is taking this situation seriously. Your trust is something we are not willing to compromise. On behalf of The Spectrum staff, I apologize for both the incident itself and any oversight that allowed it to happen.
