Olesker Out
Wednesday, January 04, 2006 -
The Associated Press
Columnist Michael Olesker has resigned two weeks before his 30th
anniversary with The (Baltimore) Sun amid allegations of plagiarism,
after an alternative weekly found instances in which he used the work
of other journalists without attribution.
Olesker resigned Tuesday, a day before the City Paper article hit the
streets.
"I hope that people will understand that in the course of deadline
pressures and trying to take a jumble of facts and boil them down to
something understandable that I made errors of sloppiness and
inadvertence that were human mistakes and certainly not in any way
willful," Olesker told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Olesker, 60, wrote a local column for 27 years. He also served in other
capacities for two years. His most recent column appeared Tuesday, his
last day. Olesker said he was "stunned" when he received a phone call
from The Sun about the City Paper's upcoming article while he was at
lunch Tuesday, and he was asked to come to The Sun's offices.
Sun Editor Tim Franklin described Olesker as "contrite and apologetic"
after meeting with editors. Franklin said Olesker decided to resign
later that day.
"This has been a very painful experience for me and for the newsroom
and obviously for Mike," Franklin said. "He's meant a lot to The Sun
over the past three decades. He has illuminated many important issues
in Baltimore and in the state in that time, so this was hard."
Olesker and Sun Political Editor David Nitkin are central figures in a
First Amendment lawsuit the newspaper has filed against Republican Gov.
Robert Ehrlich.
In November 2004, Ehrlich issued an order prohibiting executive branch
employees from speaking with Olesker and Nitkin. The ban was imposed
after Nitkin disclosed a state proposal to sell preserved forestland in
St. Mary's County to a politically connected construction company.
The governor's staff also complained about a November 2004 column in
which Olesker described a meeting that he did not attend. Olesker
acknowledged that he did not attend the meeting and apologized.
The governor's office also accused Olesker of concocting a conversation
with Lt. Gov. Michael Steele for a column in May 2004. But a few days
after leveling the accusation, Ehrlich's office acknowledged that
Steele had spoken to the columnist.
Olesker said Wednesday that he and the newspaper have "been under
tremendous pressure politically" and that he felt it was best that he
leave the paper.
A federal district judge ruled against the paper in the lawsuit, which
is now under appeal. Franklin said he didn't believe Olesker's
resignation would affect the lawsuit, because arguments already have
been made in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va.
Franklin also said the lawsuit is "bigger than one individual."
"The lawsuit was about the principle of whether a high-ranking
government official can gag tens of thousands of state employees from
talking to individual journalists because he didn't like what they
wrote," Franklin said.
Ehrlich Press Secretary Greg Massoni said in an e-mail detailing the
ban that Nitkin and Olesker "are failing to objectively report on any
issue dealing with the Ehrlich-Steele administration."
The recent allegations against Olesker surfaced Tuesday in an e-mail
from Gadi Dechter, a media reporter at the City Paper to Sun City
Editor Howard Libit.
Dechter said he and a researcher had reviewed Olesker's columns during
the past two years and found instances in which the columnist had
apparently used the work of journalists at The New York Times, The
Washington Post and The Sun without attribution.
Dechter's research was prompted by a Dec. 24 correction in The Sun in
which the paper said a paragraph from a Dec. 12 column by Olesker about
former U.S. Sen. Max Cleland was almost identical to lines in a 2003
profile by Peter Carlson of The Washington Post.
Carlson wrote: "On one of his first trips out of the hospital, an old
girlfriend pushed him around Washington in his wheelchair. Outside the
White House, the chair hit a curb and Cleland pitched forward and fell
out. He remembers flopping around helplessly in the dirt and cigarette
butts in the gutter."
Last month, Olesker wrote: "On one of his first trips out, an old
girlfriend pushed his wheelchair around Washington. Near the White
House, the wheelchair hit a curb. Cleland pitched forward and fell out,
flopping around in dirt and cigarette butts in a gutter."
At the time of the Dec. 24 correction, Franklin also ordered a review
of Olesker's columns of recent years. That review was under way when he
resigned and Franklin said that unfortunately it had not found the
pattern that City Paper's research revealed.
"We didn't just set out to investigate Olesker for any reason," Dechter
said Wednesday. "It was just that The Sun ran this correction on the
24th and it looked like an interesting story."
Below are similarities between columns written by Michael Olesker for
The (Baltimore) Sun and stories that appeared in other newspapers.
Compiled by Baltimore City Paper media columnist Gadi Dechter.
On July 3, 2003 Washington Post features writer Peter Carlson wrote:
"On one of his first trips out of the hospital, an old girlfriend
pushed him around Washington in his wheelchair. Outside the White
House, the chair hit a curb and Cleland pitched forward and fell out.
He remembers flopping around helplessly in the dirt and cigarette butts
in the gutter."
On Dec. 12, 2003 Olesker wrote:
"On one of his first trips out, an old girlfriend pushed his wheelchair
around Washington. Near the White House, the wheelchair hit a curb.
Cleland pitched forward and fell out, flopping around in dirt and
cigarette butts in a gutter."
On Feb. 19, 2005, Washington Post reporters Matthew Mosk and Lena Sun
wrote about a personnel controversy at state agencies:
"The state has been sued at least six times since Ehrlich took office
by workers who alleged they were fired for no reason other than their
political affiliation, which is illegal."
On March 1, 2005 Olesker wrote:
"The state has been sued at least six times since Ehrlich took office
by workers who alleged they were fired for their political affiliation.
That is against the law."
On Nov. 17, 2005, the Washington Posts John Wagner wrote about
Wal-Mart's lobbying against legislation in the Maryland legislature.
" . . . the bill, which would require companies with more than 10,000
workers to spend at least 8 percent of their payrolls on health
benefits or contribute to the states health insurance program for the
poor."
Olesker wrote:
". . . a landmark bill (vetoed by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.) that
would require companies with more than 10,000 workers to spend at least
8 percent of their payrolls on health benefits or contribute to the
states health insurance program for the poor."
On Aug. 27, 2004, the New York Times David Leonhard wrote on the
uninsured poor.
"But the disparity in incomes between the rich and poor grew after
having fallen in 2002. Pay did not keep pace with inflation in the
South, already the nations poorest region, in cities, or among
immigrants. And the wage gap between men and women widened for the
first time in four years."
On Oct. 15, 2004, Olesker wrote:
"The disparity in incomes widened between the rich and the poor. Pay
did not keep pace with inflation in the cities, among immigrants, or in
the South, already the nations poorest region. And the wage gap between
men and women widened."