Plagiarism/Neil Harman

[Kieran]

Neil Harman is a leading tennis writer for the Times of London, you often read Steve Tignor mention him, with appreciation, in his tennis.com blog. Now, Harman has admitted to extensive plagiarism of material for the official Wimbledon yearbook and resigned from the International Tennis Writers Association, where he was co-president.

"I am not proud of my many mistakes," he said on Wednesday night. "This is not a good day and it is at times like this when you discover who your real friends are."

Harman was found to have taken large passages for the 2013 Official Wimbledon Annual from writing in other publications such as the Guardian and Sports Illustrated without attribution.

See how easy it is? I just plagiarised most of the above paragraphs, verbatim, to bring you the news. But I'll attribute my source. And Harman didn't, which is a bizarre mistake for such an experienced and authentic witness to tennis to make.

Nowadays, there are engines that root out plagiarism, and it's a very easy thing to do. Almost as easy as citing your source, or quoting directly, or even - taking what they say and changing the words so you make it your own.

This last option can be either cynical, or inspired, and it depends on who's doing it, and how they do it.

The Times lost Simon Barnes, as mentioned in the Tignor article I linked above, and now Harman is in the dock. Not a great summer for their leading journalists, for different reasons...

 

[JesuslookslikeBorg]

neil Harman is on the tennis matches on radio 5live extra often when they cover the business end of majors, rather dull enervating voice..dunno much about his bad boy word theft antics.

silly to think he could get away with it.. like you said, esp nowadays. what a dork.

 

[tented]

And Harman didn't, which is a bizarre mistake for such an experienced and authentic witness to tennis to make.

Exactly. It's inexcusable, and plain stupid in the era of Google and various plagiarism search algorithms, as you mention. I'm very surprised. I thought he was above such behavior.

 

[MargaretMcAleer]

The fact that Harman plagiarized on multiple occasions demonstrates to me,that he knew exactly what he was doing,taking a short cut.I find his behavior inexcusable quite frankly.

 

[tented]

The fact that Harman plagiarized on multiple occasions demonstrates to me,that he knew exactly what he was doing,taking a short cut.I find his behavior inexcusable quite frankly.

Yep. Did he really think he wouldn't be found out? Is his understanding of the internet so rudimentary this never crossed his mind? Perhaps it is a reflection of his age, if this is the case. I'm not making an excuse. I'm simply trying to imagine how he thought he could get away with it.

 

[Kieran]

Yeah, I didn't realise he did it every year for the Wimbledon book, the same MO, and it's been mentioned he did it for articles too. It's bizarre. I don't know why he didn't change the words, even, just to make it look original. I mean, as someone said (I have to be careful to say that), most sports writing is so generic, they're not scribbling original ideas. They're just fricking reporting what happened... :nono

 

[Billie]

No way this can happen to a respectable tennis journalist? I guess it can. I actually stopped reading what he was writing due to his negative bias towards Nole. It is ironic for me that he now admitted to plagiarism.:lolz:

 

[Kieran]

No way this can happen to a respectable tennis journalist? I guess it can. I actually stopped reading what he was writing due to his negative bias towards Nole. It is ironic for me that he now admitted to plagiarism.:lolz:

Always great to see you, Billie. Revenge is sweet, eh? :snigger

 

[Billie]

No way this can happen to a respectable tennis journalist? I guess it can. I actually stopped reading what he was writing due to his negative bias towards Nole. It is ironic for me that he now admitted to plagiarism.:lolz:

Always great to see you, Billie. Revenge is sweet, eh? :snigger

Thank you Kieran I don't know, I am not a revengeful person really.

What are you up to? Keeping out of trouble?

 

[Kieran]

No way this can happen to a respectable tennis journalist? I guess it can. I actually stopped reading what he was writing due to his negative bias towards Nole. It is ironic for me that he now admitted to plagiarism.:lolz:

Always great to see you, Billie. Revenge is sweet, eh? :snigger

Thank you Kieran I don't know, I am not a revengeful person really.

What are you up to? Keeping out of trouble?

I'm doing my best. Was a bit shocked to read about Harman, just because it isn't like he's writing opinion pieces or breaking news from the White House. It's just reporting on tennis, which seems fairly generic...

 

[Billie]

No way this can happen to a respectable tennis journalist? I guess it can. I actually stopped reading what he was writing due to his negative bias towards Nole. It is ironic for me that he now admitted to plagiarism.:lolz:

Always great to see you, Billie. Revenge is sweet, eh? :snigger

Thank you Kieran I don't know, I am not a revengeful person really.

What are you up to? Keeping out of trouble?

I'm doing my best. Was a bit shocked to read about Harman, just because it isn't like he's writing opinion pieces or breaking news from the White House. It's just reporting on tennis, which seems fairly generic...

As long as you are doing you best I agree, it is surprising to find something like this out, I was joking about "this can't happen to a respectable journalist", but honestly there are very few things in life that can really shock me.

 

[nehmeth]

The fact that Harman plagiarized on multiple occasions demonstrates to me,that he knew exactly what he was doing,taking a short cut.I find his behavior inexcusable quite frankly.

Yep. Did he really think he wouldn't be found out? Is his understanding of the internet so rudimentary this never crossed his mind? Perhaps it is a reflection of his age, if this is the case. I'm not making an excuse. I'm simply trying to imagine how he thought he could get away with it.

At 57 maybe the internet is a useful tool, but the guy really didn't know about the present day tools that were able to root out his "short cuts".

 

[TennisFanatic7]

This was terrible from Harman and there's no excuse. If he didn't have time to do a proper job on those Wimbledon annuals he should have done the right thing and stepped down from that task.

This is mainly going by his Twitter feed but he always seemed a bit self-important to me anyway.

 

[Kenneth]

Neil Harman is a leading tennis writer for the Times of London, you often read Steve Tignor mention him, with appreciation, in his tennis.com blog. Now, Harman has admitted to extensive plagiarism of material for the official Wimbledon yearbook and resigned from the International Tennis Writers Association, where he was co-president.

"I am not proud of my many mistakes," he said on Wednesday night. "This is not a good day and it is at times like this when you discover who your real friends are."

Harman was found to have taken large passages for the 2013 Official Wimbledon Annual from writing in other publications such as the Guardian and Sports Illustrated without attribution.

See how easy it is? I just plagiarised most of the above paragraphs, verbatim, to bring you the news. But I'll attribute my source. And Harman didn't, which is a bizarre mistake for such an experienced and authentic witness to tennis to make.

Nowadays, there are engines that root out plagiarism, and it's a very easy thing to do. Almost as easy as citing your source, or quoting directly, or even - taking what they say and changing the words so you make it your own.

This last option can be either cynical, or inspired, and it depends on who's doing it, and how they do it.

The Times lost Simon Barnes, as mentioned in the Tignor article I linked above, and now Harman is in the dock. Not a great summer for their leading journalists, for different reasons...

Who busted the guy? It would have been easy to avoid all this by just paraphrasing and adding some new ideas in the text...