Plagiarism or not?

Here's a story that appeared in an Abu Dhabi newspaper and online in March 2012;

The Syrian schoolboys who sparked a revolution.

Here's a story from the Globe and Mail from December 2016;

The graffiti kids who sparked the Syrian war.

I briefly noted the similarities in a blog post at the time, Propornot, and then forgot about it.

Today on the back page of the front section of my Globe and Mail I noticed a full page congratulatory message from the Globe to itself. That story won Story of the Year from the Foreign Press Association! Here's what Globe editor-in-chief David Walmsley has to say; "This global win is a recognition of what happens when you ask a simple question - how did the Syrian war begin? - and allow a journalist to follow the thread through all its twists and turns."

Hmm...

So how did the Syrian war begin?

Answering that question would entail a close look at events in Daraa in February and March of 2011. About ten thousand of the twelve thousand words in the Globe story are given over to historical background, what's happened to the protagonists since, and editorializing about who the good guys and the bad guys might be.

 Insofar as the story is about the nuts and bolts of how the Syrian war actually began, the Globe's story is virtually identical to the story published in Abu Dhabi almost five years before.

What I find more than a little precious is that Mark Mackinnon, the writer of the Globe story, claims he spent six months getting to the bottom of the events of February and March, when all he had to do was read the Abu Dhabi story, which takes five minutes or less to find online.

Like I said; hmm...

Google's commitment to a free press; Big Brother tightens the noose

I see where Google Canada has found half a million in spare change to fund a media literacy program at the Canadian Journalism Foundation. This will equip Canadian youngsters age 9 - 19 to better ferret out "fake news" and develop a "deeper understanding of the role journalism plays in democracy."

Of course it will. After all, a free press is the very cornerstone of our democracy. Just ask the CJF if you don't believe me. Here's CJF chair David Walmsley; "fake news accelerates distrust in our institutions, including distrust of the trained media who spend so much time trying to hold the powerful to account."

Oh, so that's what they've been doing! If that's the case, they've been doing a slovenly job of it over my lifetime. As near as I can tell, trust in mainstream media was on a downward spiral for decades before Trump and Putin allegedly invented fake news a couple of years ago, and for good reason; the typical news consumer figured out long ago that if and when media hold the powerful to account, it is by accident rather than by intent.

No, there are many agendas that have priority over that particular mission, and they're generally the agendas of the rich and powerful.

Be that as it may, we're truly going down the bunny hole if we buy into the notion that Google or anybody else in Big Tech has the slightest interest in saving journalism or promoting truth-telling. These outfits are now the richest and most powerful entities on the planet, with the exception of a handful of nation states.

It's safe to say that holding themselves to account is not a plank in their program.