The Los Angeles Time's Secret List on Doris Kearns Goodwin
- How much did Goodwin pay in 1988 to silence Lynne McTaggart, author of Kathleen
Kennedy?
- Where is the report by Goodwin’s assistants on the total number of
passages copied without proper attribution in The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys,
which the author commissioned in February?
- When will Simon & Schuster publish the corrected version of The Fitzgerald
and the Kennedys, likewised promised in February after the flawed paperback
editions were recalled?
- What did the Pulitzer Board find in its probe of her literary bona fides and did the Board force her resignation?
- And, most puzzling of all: Why won’t the the Los Angeles Times print or post on its website its secret list of some 29 passages that Goodwin supposedly stole from other authors her 1995 Pulitzer-winning No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.
John Carroll, chairman of the Pulitzer Board as well as editor of the Los Angeles Times, launched the Board’s investigation and accepted Goodwin’s resignation in a diplomatic exchange of letters in May. When I asked for further facts about the unprecedented shunning of a fellow board member and
Prize recipient, neither Carroll nor former Board Administrator Seymour Topping responded.
The LAT’s Baquet and King, the editor and reporter on the 6000-word story headlined “As History Repeats Itself, the Scholar Becomes the Story (Aug.
4),” were comparatively garrulous on the telephone and via email. But both journalists refused to disclose the complete list of allegedly plagiarized passages in No Ordinary Time that was trumpeted in their story.
King wrote that the paper hired “an outside reader to select a half-dozen
or so of the books listed by Goodwin as source materials” in No Ordinary
Time and that the anonymous reader discovered “nearly three dozen instances
where phrases and sentences in Goodwin's book resembled the words of other authors.”
This was blockbuster material. Previously, Goodwin had dropped an iron curtain,
backed by legal threats, between her admittedly tainted Kennedy book and her
professedly pure Pulitzer bio of the Roosevelts. If the LAT story stood up,
her reputation might be shattered beyond the repair of her powerful media friends.
Although Jim Lehrer has kept Goodwin off the News Hour, Tim Russert continues
to feature her on Meet the Press.
Yet the LAT oddly failed to show most of its evidence. How could the reader judge Goodwin’s guilt, especially in face of her denial, without seeing all the cards? Baffled by the paper’s apparent self-censorhip, I telephoned King. He told me that his story was not about plagiarism and that printing a fraction of the quotes was sufficient to make the point that Goodwin was a copyist in No Ordinary Time. As for giving me the list, he cited the sanctity of his notes. Although I shared every bit of my Goodwin notes with him, excluding the confidential and off-the-record, he would not reciprocate.
So I kicked the matter upstairs to his editor, Dean Baquet. In a pleasant phone conversation, Baquet restated King’s nonnegotiable position. Hoping to get around the institutional roadblock, I suggested that Baquet merely post the complete list on the paper’s website. He seemed open to this compromise when our phoner was cut off by a power outage in his office.
I followed up with an email to both men, arguing that the LAT’s alleged-but-secret list of plagiarized passages was a disservice to history and journalism. Thereupon, Baquet defended the paper’s suppression of evidence in a series of exchanges reproduced below.
Is it fair for a newspaper to accuse an author of “nearly three-dozen”
thefts in a book, while printing a measly seven and burying the rest?
Baquet told me that he won't be influenced by the opinion of his peers, but you might want to give him a holler anyway at dean.baquet@latimes.com.
EXCHANGE OF EMAILS BETWEEN PHILIP NOBILE AND THE LA TIMES: A SELECTION
Editor's Note: The emails below have been edited for punctuation and grammar. Obscure references have been dropped. Material considered possibly libelous has been excluded.
Philip Nobile to Peter King (8-8-02)
Peter,
Congratulations. Your story was well-written and nicely nuanced. You had some
smoking guns, too. ...
But some things bothered me ....
Basically, I wished that you had been tougher. Your big news was the copying
in "No Ordinary Time." You proved that a Pulitzer Prize biography
was tainted work and that Goodwin had lied about reforming her thieving ways.
The last journalist who tried to do that was threatened by a lawsuit. But this
newsworthy angle is missing from your headline, subhead, lead, and conclusion.
In effect, Goodwin got her wish, a story fuzzy enough for people to forget,
and maybe for other newspaper editors to ignore. Nonetheless, I've sent Globe
editor Martin Baron a copy of your story and asked him why he hasn't told his
readers about it.
Sorry to sound so harsh. I just hate to see obvious culprits wriggle out of
trouble because the journalist doesn't tie the knots tight enough. You had the
goods but you didn't press hard enough.
Philip
P.S. Could you send me a copy of the three-dozen parallel passages? Thanks.
Philip Nobile to Peter King (8-19-02)
Peter,
Still waiting for reply to last email. Hoping to get those parallel passages
you discovered. Heard from Rick Shenkman at HNN that you won't let anybody see
the material. Have you changed your mind? Can you accuse Doris of this massive
theft without disclosing the evidence? Doesn't seem right to me. Shouldn't readers
be able to judge for themselves? Why not print parallels in the first place?
Let's talk.
Philip
Philip Nobile to Peter King and Dean Baquet (8-30-02)
Eventually, Nobile made contact by telephone. He was told that the parallels the LAT researcher found are considered work product.
Dear Peter and Dean:
After yesterday's conversations, I now understand your reluctance to publish
all the parallels claimed in your Doris Kearns Goodwin story. While
you may have good institutional reasons for not sharing "work product,"
the Goodwin case is surely an exception.
What you call "work product," historians consider prime evidence.
Your paper made the astonishing claim of finding 30-plus copyings in a random
search of Goodwin's Pulitzer Prize biography, "No Ordinary Time."
Yet you published only a handful of examples and won't reveal the rest. The
rules of journalism are different, of course, from those of scholarship. No
historian could get away with publishing a claim like yours without making the
data available to other scholars. (Nor could a prosecutor in court.) Keeping
research secret violates the spirit of free and open inquiry characteristic
of the university.
The Goodwin case is important and may define the standards of narrative history.
Consequently, historians need all the evidence they can get their hands on.
Goodwin scorned your examples, both the few published and the many not. Plagiarism
is a matter of degrees and accumulation. Who is right? You or Goodwin? Historians
would like to know.
May I suggest an escape from your institutional dilemma: post the complete list
of parallels in your archive as an addendum to Peter's original story or let
your researcher do the disclosure of his/her findings. There's got to be a way.
In the future, Goodwin and her defenders are bound to say that the LAT didn't
have the goods--otherwise they would have published.
Looking forward,
Philip
Dean Baquet to Philip Nobile (8-30-02)
Philip,
First off, I want to say that I enjoyed our conversation yesterday. You care
about this issue, and you helped me understand your side of the argument. But
that's the historian's side, not the journalist's. After thinking it through,
I'm going to decline putting the examples on the web site. The story ran weeks
ago, and if we put additional material on the site it would be clear that we
were just trying to display our case against Goodwin. In fact, that's not our
job. As I said yesterday, a newspaper edits itself everyday, leaving things
out, putting some back in, all for a variety of reasons. Sometimes we leave
stuff out to keep the story from being too long. In this case we used the examples
we thought were appropriate in a story that was designed as a rich portrait
of Goodwin and the questions that were being raised. In the end, we stand by
what we publish, not what we accumulate in the process. I think we published
one hell of a story. So I'm going to leave it at that.
Thanks much,
Dean Baquet
Philip Nobile to Dean Baquet (9-1-02)
Dear Dean,
Assuming that you remain open to discussion on the disclosure of the Goodwin
parallels, here are some comments on your reply. I believe that the stakes are
high in the LAT's refusal to disclose the parallels. Withholding important information
relevant to a major news story seems odd .... Peter King reported (Aug. 4) that
the LAT "contracted with an outside reader to select a half-dozen or so
of the books listed by Goodwin as source materials and simply follow the footnotes,
randomly reading passages of 'No Ordinary Time' against the other works. The
process, which consumed roughly one full workweek, produced nearly three dozen
instances where phrases and sentences in Goodwin's book resembled the words
of other authors." Yet Peter's story included only seven examples of the
alleged copyings.
Some thirty were missing, inexplicably. Since the damaging charge of plagiarism
depends on accumulation, it makes sense to print all the examples you have.
What are seven slip-ups in a text of 635 pages with 633 citations based on approximately
300 books and countless documents? Whatever editorial reason prevented listing
all the parallels in Peter's 6000-word portrait, you might have published them
conveniently via a click on your web version.
"No Ordinary Time" is no ordinary biography by any ordinary author.
The book is a Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller, still selling widely in trade
paperback. Goodwin was the first lady of American history and a media icon before
her massive plagiarism and cover-up a ` propos "The Fitzgeralds and the
Kennedys" was exposed earlier this year. She is fighting to salvage her
reputation. Her main refuge is the alleged integrity of "No Ordinary Time."
The LAT claims to have found 30-plus copyings. This amount, from "a half-dozen
or so" books, indicates that Goodwin may have repeated her [offense]. And
yet, the reader cannot judge the degree of her appropriations because you are
keeping the list secret. What possible journalistic justification can there
be for burying the facts behind your claim, especially when your subject denied
your interpretation? Why is the reader the only one left in the dark?
...
Thanks for your consideration.
Philip
P.S. If your answer is still a thousand times no, please pass my request to
your editor-in-chief.
Dean Baquet to Philip Nobile (9-2-02)
Philip,
Alas, I am going to continue to say no. The reasons you offer are reasons for
historians to contemplate, not journalists. Our job is to present the story
we edit, not to amass evidence for historians to use in making their judgments.
We presented ample evidence to support the story. That's what we do, day in
and day out, in dozens of stories every day in the paper. We have to maintain
a neutral role, so that we are not participants in the news we report -- which
we would become if we disseminated information beyond what we print.
When we do 100 interviews for a story, we publish those that belong in the story,
in our judgment. Today's paper, for example, includes numerous stories that
are the result of much digging --- a major takeout on the Sept. 11 plot, for
example. We cut many interviews from that story, for reasons of space, clarity,
etc. I'd never offer those notes to anyone. I need to control how it is used.
Unfortunately, I am the last word on this subject. I assigned the story and
determined the length and play. There is only one editor who outranks me at
the Times --- John Carroll, the editor of the paper. And he recused himself
from every stage of the story because he is chairman of the Pulitzer Board.
So the debate ends with me. I'm sorry. I hope we get to meet at some point,
over lunch, or a drink. I admire your work. I just have to stick to my guns
on this one, as I have on many, many occasions in the past when politicians,
readers, judges, and even other journalists have asked to see our work product.
Yours is not an unusual request, and my answer is the one we -- and editors
at every major newspaper -- always give.
I must say that it would not be difficult to match what we did. I'm sure some
historian would be happy to do what Pete did. It was a simple task. So I don't
believe the fate of history rests on my decision. For the price of the book
and some hard work, you can certainly get someone to duplicate our reporting.
Thank you,
Dean Baquet