Shalitting

You can't read Romensko anymore with coming across a story of some journalist cut-and-pasting a chunk of their article from some website. The New York Times, Slate and practically every sportswriter you've never heard of -- They're all doing it. I propose calling this technique "Shalitting," after an early practitioner of this form of theft.

But there's a subtle variation on the theme that's been getting more attention lately. It seems a lot of wingnut book authors are conducting the "research" for their books simply by surfing the web, relying on bogus sources like WorldNutDaily and the Media Research Center, and passing those sites' false claims off as fact.

Earlier, I mentioned that I suspected David Limbaugh was simply retyping inaccurate press releases from fundy websites and printing them as gospel in his book, Persecution. Now Bob Somerby has caught Bernie Goldberg recycling misquotes which earlier appeared on Brent Bozell's Media Research Center website.

It doesn't bother me that the wingnuts do this, since I don't buy their shoddy tomes. But you'd think the suckers who do buy these books would demand a better product for their hard-earned dollars.