Another Journalist Down

It feels like a death in the family.

Late last night, I learned that my good friend Ken Parish Perkins has resigned as TV critic at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram newspaper amid charges he plagiarized several passages of past stories.

For those who don't know Ken's work, that's like hearing that Picasso ripped off other painters or Shakespeare lifted lines from a no-name contemporary. As we got to know each other during several years side-by-side covering the Television Critics Association's summer press tour, Ken developed a reputation as a quietly intense, brilliant writer -- someone who would hardly need to use other people's words in his work.

Quite simply, I always felt he was one of the best arts critics in the country. And it was particularly inspiring that he was a black man asking the same questions about race, culture and entertainment that I was.

With so much going on that is demoralizing in journalism -- Judith Miller's shenanigans, Bob Woodward's lapse, Mary Mapes' blame-shifting -- the news about Ken has hit me particularly hard. Last year, I saw another promising young black arts journalist felled by plagiarism problems -- Greg Fields of the Macon Telegraph, who I mentored briefly. And Bob Betcher, longtime TV critic at the Stuart News, recently passed away. So it feels as if my friends are slowly falling away.

My attitude wasn't helped by the Star-Telegram's explanation of the nature of the transgressions they found, which they said involved long sentences or phrases taken from other publications without attribution: "Almost all of the questionable content involved a sentence or two of background material found far into the story. But the evidence represented a clear pattern to Star-Telegram editors that Perkins was violating our ethics policy on attribution of material that was not original. "

Plagiarism is, of course, a serious offense for a journalist. But I want to believe in my friend, and I can't help wondering if this wasn't some horrible mistake -- a bad habit that went on too long or an oversight allowed to stand for too long.

UPDATE: Former Chicago Tribune TV critic John Cook has posted his own blog item on Ken, alleging he left that newspaper's TV critic job amid charges he had fabricated material in some stories. See John's item here.)

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: Richard Prince has the first post-resignation interview with Ken, in which he says he "can't take the lies" about his career and explains that the offending paragraph was a piece of research which he forgot to rewrite in the story.

More than ever, journalism is starting to feel like a precarious profession.

Comments

[Simonsays]

not another one?!wow, that is unfortunate. i wonder if there needs to be some sort of workshop n cut & paste during the convention ...? (or have we pretty much wore the topic out?)

[Eric Deggans]

I don't know about that one. When a journalist as experienced as Ken makes a basic mistake like this one, I'm not sure if a convention seminar is what's required. We seem to have a hard time in the industry distinguishing between honest mistakes and mistakes made out of malice or maladjustment. We also have a tough time reinforcing basic skills and making sure we all apply the same ethical standards in our reporting and writing. Until we figure out how to better train people, i'm afraid we're going to keep running into instances where we have to let people go from jobs when we're not sure if their mitake was intentional or not...

[Anonymous]

It's not just journalism that's a tuff career these days. Corporate America tends to shake the career ladder to make employees fall off their cost sheets. It's a Wal-Mart world.

[Last one out]

“Civil discussions are disappearing,” wrote retiring Times journalist Lucy Ware Morgan in today’s column. She specifically calls out Internet sites, and the people who “share the right or left wing belief it espouses and decide to fire rockets at anyone who disagrees.”Your blog, Eric, is a distinctly hostile site. You fire rockets. So I give up. Go have a conversation with yourself.

[Lorrie]

Re: firing rockets. Well, duh, yeah, I would hope so. The point of this blog is not to share tuna cassarole recipes. Keep 'em coming, Eric. We need all the straight-up dialogue we can get.Lorrie

[Mr. Honey-Baked-Ham]

I do find it odd that a brother would practice plagiarism. Like Malcolm X he had to know that the slave master was watching and just waiting to pounce. Perhaps Ken felt that if he looked Jamaican he could fly under the radar screen or maybe he had developed a crack habit. It’s a shame.

[Eric Deggans]

More anonymous, race-based insults. Sigh.Anyway, I'm sorry that Last One Out feels my blog isn't civil. i pride myself on conducting dialogues with a high degree of respect -- as long as the person i'm talking to shows the same respect in return.I do feel passionately about the issues on which I am writing, and I do make strong points. If such dialogue feels uncivil to you, then that's your call. But I think it is important to display a strong point of view in this forum, which is all about sharing less formal ideas and material which wouldn't fit in a traditional newspaper story.So i hope you'll give the blog another chance. because i think we get at a truth that can be tough to reach in the world of mainstream, shy-away-from-controversy journalism...

[Chase Squires]

I don't know what to make of this .. indeed, very sad. But to call this a "basic mistake" seems to make light of what has been indicated. Once? It happens, maybe he jotted down a phrase, meant to change it, and forgot .. twice, okay. Three times? Well, sloppy, and in need of a refresher ... but star-telegram reported "What they found were several stories and columns over about a two-year period in which he used either whole sentences or long phrases in sentences that were taken from other newspapers, magazines and Web sites verbatim without attribution of any kind"Then the news from Chicago ... that raises more issues, like does this go back a decade?And that would be more than a "basic mistake." -- Chase

[Eric Deggans]

Definitely, you make a good point, Chase. And I will allow that Ken is a friend of mine, which colors how I am seeing this. But it is hard to know the basic facts of this case. You know that, because we TV and media writers are all writing stories on the same thing, that it is possible to use similar phrasing without intent. So is "several" three stories? Two? Ten? How long are the phrases? And are they boilerplate phrases anyone could have regurgitated, or specific turns of phrase that could not be manufctured by mistake...?The clip from John Cook alleges Ken made up interviews he didn't conduct in Chicago, which is a very different crime from what he is accused of in Fort Worth.Finally, I also allow that my experience working alongside Ken and seeing how hard he works and how he turned a press conference or interview we may both have attended into an amazing column or story, does affect my judgment.In turn, I would ask that you allow that a friend might hope for an explanation that doesn't mean the worst for someone he still cares about.

[last one out]

Eric,you wear the left ventricle of your heart on your sleeve. It doesn’t mean you have to gut dissenters. Sheesh, even Dubya is likeable when he mangles a sil-abble or two. So if you're proposing civil rules of the road on your blog, I'm b-a-a-ck.

[Eric Deggans]

Yay! Last One Out does not live up to the name. I apreciate your feedback and willingness to come back. I don't know if I won't wind up making you regret your decision, but I do promise to choose my words even more carefully in the future.So if I make you angry from now on, you'll know I probably meant to do it :)

[back in the saddle]

Hooray! Now let's get back to knocking each other senseless (verbally speaking) w/o animosity. And no bloviating (ha ha ha)!