Et Tu, Paul Krugman?

On Dec. 14, 2002, Tim Rutton wrote a column in the Los Angeles Times that discussed, among other things, the “slapdash standards of contemporary nonfiction publishing.” In particular, Rutton described how some of today’s journalists have not been holding themselves to very high standards in attributing quotations and paraphrases to their sources.

Rutton’s column ran last December—why am I bringing it up now? Because this past week I stumbled across a rather striking example of this phenomenon in the least likely of places.

In Paul Krugman’s recent column in the March 7, 2003 edition of The New York Times, “Let Them Hate as Long as They Fear,” I was immediately intrigued—being a classics concentrator—by the classical reference in its title. Early in the column, Krugman correctly notes that this quotation was supposedly “a favorite of the emperor Caligula.” It would have been nice, though, if Krugman had also given proper credit to the source of a contemporary passage that he uses later in the column.

Here are the two passages in question, one from the March 1 issue of The Economist, the other from Krugman.

The Economist: “One American diplomat has given warning that a Mexican No could ‘stir up feelings’ against Mexicans in the United States. He draws comparisons with the Japanese-Americans who were interned after 1941, and wonders whether Mexico ‘wants to stir the fires of jingoism during a war.’”

Krugman: “Last week The Economist quoted an American diplomat who warned that if Mexico didn’t vote for a U.S. resolution it could ‘stir up feelings’ against Mexicans in the United States. He compared the situation to that of Japanese-Americans who were interned after 1941, and wondered whether Mexico ‘wants to stir the fires of jingoism during a war.’”

Something is wrong here. Krugman does attribute the direct quotations from the diplomat to The Economist, but he describes the quotations’ contexts—particularly in the second sentence—as though it is his voice and not The Economist’s. In doing so, he passes off entire sequences of words (e.g. “...compared the situation to that of Japanese-Americans who were interned after 1941, and wondered whether Mexico...”) written by The Economist as his own.

If Krugman handed in this column to a section of Expository Writing 20—or indeed any other class—this would likely have landed him a trip to the Administrative Board. In “Writing with Sources,” the Expository Writing Program’s guide on when and how to cite in academic papers, it says, “Words you take verbatim from another person also need to be put in quotation marks, even if you take only two or three words; it’s not enough simply to cite.”

Of course, the standards for proper citation in journalism are, for good reason, more lax than in academia; reporters from different newspapers regularly borrow story ideas and information from each other without a second thought in a manner that, were they academics, would land them in some hot water.

Fair enough. But even so, this case is especially unsettling because it occurs in an editorial column, and not merely in a piece of pure reportage. In editorial writing, which purports to reflect the opinions of its author, it is clearly much more important than in news writing to be clear about whose thoughts and whose words one is borrowing.

Granted, Krugman—as opposed to, say, Times columnist Maureen Dowd—is better known for the substance of his arguments than his prose; but he, too, is more than just a reporter, and the same standard should apply to him as to Dowd or, for that matter, any other columnist.

Of course, everyone is allowed to make a small mistake now and then. The most troubling thing about this, then, is that neither Krugman nor the Times have run a correction or issued an apology, though they have had ample time and occasion to do so.

Does Krugman concede that there is a problem with what he did? And if not, does he employ such citing practices regularly? The absence of any public acknowledgment of culpability in this particular instance leads me to wonder. Moreover, if even the great Paul Krugman, of the great New York Times, employs marginal citing practices, there seems good reason to fear, as Rutton suggests, that there is a widespread problem afoot in the profession.

There is an irony in all of this, which Rutton touches upon in his column. After citing some questionable citations in a book by two journalists about Mohammed Atta, Rutton notes that “the net effect of the similar quotes and paraphrases raises many of the same questions that so damaged the reputation of historian Doris Kearns Goodwin earlier this year.”

The media, of course, had a field day lambasting Goodwin and fellow historian Stephen Ambrose for lapses in citation comparable to the one by Krugman above. Perhaps journalists need to take a harder look at their own practices before criticizing academics.

Maybe I am overreacting to what is not, in fact, a situation that needs correction. Perhaps there is, in fact, nothing wrong with journalists’—as opposed to academics’—borrowing a few words here and there from their colleagues. Perhaps I am hyper-sensitized to issues such as this because of my current hybrid identity as both an academic and a journalist (although if that were the case, one might expect the same fastidiousness from Krugman, who happens to be an economist at Princeton in addition to his role at the Times.)

Am I right? Am I wrong? To properly cite one of my favorite endings from one of my favorite columnists—who happens to be named Paul Krugman—“I’ve reported, you decide.”

Zachary S. Podolsky ’04 is a classics concentrator in Currier House. His column appears on alternate Wednesdays.