Columnist accused of plagiarism

Sun says Olesker confused notes, issues correction

Friday, Dec. 30, 2005

Supporters of Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and critics of The (Baltimore) Sun — many of whom are the same people — have spent several days enjoying the exposure of an apparent plagiarism by columnist Michael Olesker.

On Dec. 24, The Sun ran a three-paragraph correction saying Olesker ‘‘confused” 18-month-old notes from an interview he conducted and a transcription from a Washington Post article. That confusion led to substantial similarities between a paragraph in his Dec. 12 column and a story that appeared in the Washington Post in 2003.

‘‘We wonder how many other times Mr. Olesker has been quote-unquote confused,” said Shareese N. DeLeaver, an Ehrlich spokeswoman.

Sun City Editor Howard Libit defended the columnist.

‘‘Mike has been working for almost 30 years, and these kinds of things have not come up before,” he said.

However, DeLeaver accused Olesker of being a ‘‘repeat offender.” Within an hour of a request for comment, she provided a 1999 letter to The Sun that had criticized Olesker. That writer claimed Olesker had stolen his idea for calculating the cost of the war on drugs from an unpublished 1995 letter to the editor.

Libit said letters to the editor are not shared with news staff, and Olesker’s column focused on the comments of a former police commissioner, who was making similar calculations.

Libit said he was not allowed to discuss any disciplinary actions the paper has taken. The plagiarism was revealed while Olesker was on vacation. His column is scheduled to resume Jan. 3. Olesker did not return a telephone call.

In the column in question, Olesker blasted Ehrlich for hiring Bo Harmon as his campaign director. Harmon was campaign manager in 2002 for Saxby Chambliss (R), who unseated former U.S. Sen. Max Cleland, (D-Ga.) a Vietnam War veteran whose battle wounds left him a triple amputee. A Chambliss television ad compared Cleland with terrorists, sparking a nationwide furor.

On Dec. 12, Olesker wrote of Cleland: ‘‘A haunted, ghostly figure, he spent excruciating months recuperating at Walter Reed Army Hospital. On one of his first trips out, an old girlfriend pushed his wheelchair around Washington. Near the White House, the wheelchair hit a curb. Cleland pitched forward and fell out, flopping around in dirt and cigarette butts in a gutter.”

On July 3, 2003, the Post’s Peter Carlson wrote: ‘‘He spent eight months recuperating at Walter Reed Army Hospital. On one of his first trips out of the hospital, an old girlfriend pushed him around Washington in his wheelchair. Outside the White House, the chair hit a curb and Cleland pitched forward and fell out. He remembers flopping around helplessly in the dirt and cigarette butts in the gutter.”

Libit said Olesker had written the Carlson passage in a notebook as part of his research for an interview with Cleland in 2004. Reviewing the notes for his Dec. 12 column, Olesker believed the anecdote was part of the interview, not part of the Post article, Libit said.

Olesker has been wearing a bull’s-eye on his backside since Nov. 18, 2004, when Ehrlich ordered state employees not to talk to him or David Nitkin, a Sun reporter who covered the State House until he was promoted last year.

Ehrlich objected to Olesker taking literary license in one column in describing the facial expressions of an Ehrlich aide at a hearing Olesker did not attend. The administration also claimed Olesker never conducted an interview used in another column, but Olesker was able to prove the interview took place.

The Sun has gone to court seeking an order forcing Ehrlich to end the blacklisting, but has lost in the early rounds. Both sides are awaiting an opinion from the U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond.

Libit, however, said timing had nothing to do with how the editors reacted to Olesker.

‘‘I don’t think failing to give proper attribution for articles is anything we believe is proper at any time,” Libit said. ‘‘Any time these kinds of things happen, we’re going to treat it serious regardless of when the piece might be written or who wrote it.”

Former Westminster mayor Kevin Dayhoff uncovered the plagiarism and described it in a Dec. 21 posting for thetentacle.com, a Thurmont Web site that offers daily opinion pieces.

Dayhoff said he followed the Cleland-Chambliss campaign closely and remembered the Post article when he read Olesker’s column.

Dayhoff is also a paid columnist for the Westminster Eagle, a weekly newspaper owned by Patuxent Publishing, which is owned by The Sun.

‘‘It’s going to hurt the Sunpapers because I can hear Ehrlich say it proves my point,” Dayhoff said in an interview.