Profound Arrogance: The Other Harper's Plagiarism Case

How Jeff Tietz used work by author David DeKok without attribution for his Feb 2004 Harper's essay, "The Great Centralia Coal Fire."

This matter was already well-covered by Tom Scocca in the 5/26/04 New York Observer. (I don't have a good on-line link to it.) There's not much I can add other than outrage and puzzlement.

It's a familiar pattern. A wonder-boy essayist receives an assignment from Harper's, borrows heavily from the published authority on the subject, and takes all plaudits while the expert on the subject is not even thought about.

In this case Tietz borrowed some words but more, borrowed David DeKok's work-- most outrageously, quotes from individuals who'd been tracked down and interviewed by DeKok.

Where was Mr. Tietz's conscience while he was doing this? Oh yes, he did his own work-- but at the same time he stole the work of David DeKok. Did DeKok's interviews with people mean nothing? If they did, Tietz wouldn't have used them.

To say that everybody does it is no excuse. To say, as Harper's did, that "there's no legal requirement" to attribute DeKok, is no excuse. There's legality and then there's ethics; the consideration due one another within the community of writers. Any crime can be made "legal"-- and has, for centuries. That something is "legal" means only that the biggest gang is behind the measure, even if that gang be dressed in black robes and supported by full missile power.

I'm being hyperbolic. Surely this is a trivial matter-- just another slight of the kind which happens every day to a writer someplace. But not trivial to David DeKok-- nor to Jeff Tietz and Harper's if they slander their own reputations because of it.

Yes, the community of writers in this country are jellyfish who bow to the nearest perceived power. But any power no matter how arrogant and insular like Harper's is subject to the sanction of right and wrong; of the truth.

I wish I could post here the entire lengthy matter; DeKok's petition for redress; the Harper's response; the Tom Scocca summary of the complaint. I'll touch on a few lowlights.

Like the other Harper's plagiarist, in "borrowing" from DeKok's efforts Jeff Tietz made a number of mistakes-- for instance, confusing a federal agancy with a state one. (David DeKok has documented all the missteps.) Some mistakes weren't caught, such as when Jeff Tietz alters a "recommendation" from a Department of Mines official (page 36 of DeKok's book Unseen Danger) to "suggested" on page 49 of the Harper's article. A recommendation by a government official is a committed, documented act, on the record, responsibility taken for it. Hardly a mere suggestion! A minor point, but an example of the Harper's essayist's carelessness, one among many. On the copy of the Tietz essay DeKok sent me, he's circled Tietz's mistakes; 14 in all-- these in addition to the extensive underlined portions of the essay of sentences Tietz reworded from DeKok's book.

As in the Bissell Harper's essay, Jeff Tietz seemed to have had the author's book directly in front of him as he wrote his essay. Why not, then, have mentioned it? Why, Mr. Tietz, if you were writing such a thorough essay, did you not simply call the acknowledged authority on the matter, David DeKok himself? This skulking around is the behavior of a kind of contemporary carpetbagger.

Why did Harper's not make a simple statement somewhere in that issue, or a later one, that David DeKok was a source? Why not do this? Oh yeah, if enough noise is made, and if Jeff Tietz ever writes his own book on the subject, he'll no doubt eventually finally cave in and mention DeKok (never mentioning the original plagiarism of course); the original damage and disrespect already done-- and if this isn't good enough you can be sure there will be hosts of demi-puppets howling crying scornfully against any stray individual who'll dare raise voice about it. Any grudgement will be done with the force of arrogance, "Take it or leave it."

Not that Harper's editor heir-apparent Roger D. Hodge would ever grudgingly or not give acknowledgement of inconsideration or mistake. His response to DeKok's lawyer is a masterwork of high-placed arrogance.

"Jeff Tietz's sentences bear no resemblance to David DeKok's." (Not true.) "The suggestion that Jeff Tietz has attempted to pass off someone else's work as his own is preposterous and defamatory." (But that's exactly what Tietz did in part of his essay. He defames himself.) "It is unfortunate that your client feels such an unreasonable proprietary interest in this story. His expectations are symptomatic of an unhappy trend in contemporary culture whereby ownership rights are increasingly asserted in circumstances that have no basis in our legal tradition. This is not a matter of 'fair use'. . . ."
Here we go: The law. The law! When all David DeKok is asking for, really, is simple public acknowledgement; common consideration and respect. (Which from Roger D. Hodge he'll never get.)

It disgusts me to read again the Roger D. Hodge letter, ending, bizarrely, with the kiss-off, "With kind regards." Huh??? What is this? Who is this "Senior Editor"? A lawyer? An automaton? A fellow writer? It's scarcely possible. A human being? Such an animal in the body of Hodge's words is not to be found.

Jeff Tietz was brought in to write the essay, presumably because he is, in Tom Scocca's sarcastic term, a "belletrist." Yet Tietz not only used the quotes DeKok obtained, he mis-used them. In typical slipshod Harper's fashion, the key moment of DeKok's write-up of his interview with a man who'd fought the Centralia fire is plopped in matter-of-factly by Tietz: "causing a young BOM engineer named John Rosella to cry"-- robbing DeKok's work of its emotion and power. (In this instance Tietz showed inconsideration to literature.) All is sloppiness and arrogance.

One last point I want to dispute here is the idea put forth by the other Harper's essayist Tom Bissell in Agni that monthly magazines should be subject to slacker rules than daily newspapers. This is nonsense, absurd on the face of it-- because in a magazine not done on a daily deadline the writer and editor have time to get it right. (Some magazines send their writers proofs to review.) If the Harper's writer and editor didn't get it right, it's because they didn't want to. There seems to be a lot of that going on with Mr. Hodge in the Harper's driver's seat.

There is more to be said-- if not about this particular article, then about Roger D. Hodge and Harper's.