Universal Press Syndicate: we don’t think Coulter is guilty of plagiarism

I am not a big defender of Ann Coulter, but on the accusations of plagiarism coming from certain segments of the lefy blogosphere, I have to say that from what I’ve seen of the alleged incidents of plagiarism, they have a really weak case. Universal Press Syndicate (where Coulter’s columns appear) thinks so, too:

NEW YORK Universal Press Syndicate said today that it doesn’t think controversial columnist Ann Coulter is guilty of plagiarism.

When reached for reaction to Universal’s statement, the head of the company the New York Post asked to investigate the alleged plagiarism said of some of Coulter’s work: “It is uncited, it is unoriginal, and it does look like plagiarism.” But iParadigms CEO John Barrie emphasized that it’s up to Coulter’s syndicate and book publisher to accept or ignore his company’s findings. “Our technology is not designed to make those judgment calls,” he said of the iThenticate system.

In a statement sent to E&P, Universal President and Editor Lee Salem said: “Last week a software program company official ran Ann Coulter’s columns through a ‘match-text’ program, frequently used by teachers to detect original work. The New York Post cited two columns in which some text matched other published materials and also mentioned three snippets in her book, ‘Godless: The Church of Liberalism.’

“In addition to looking at the columns mentioned in the New York Post story, we also reviewed a sampling of other columns that have been mentioned in the media. Like her book publisher, Crown, Universal Press Syndicate finds no merits to the allegations of plagiarism brought by the software company executive. There are only so many ways you can rewrite a fact and minimal matching text is not plagiarism.

Brainster has a sampling of the alleged plagiarism and comes to the same conclusion. Last Friday, uber-liberal Kos, who like so many on the left hate Ann with a passion, wrote that he thought the charges of plagiarism against Ann were “overblown.” I’m surprised he wasn’t accused of being a ‘turncoat’ over that.

Human Events debunks the plagiarism charges against Ann here.

Prior:

• What he said
• Conservative debate: when passion turns to poison
• What kind of poll is this??