Update: Company to Probe Coulter Plagiarism ChargesI heard back from Universal Press Syndicate’s Kathie Kerr. Her company distributes Ann Coulter’s column to over 100 newspapers around the country — columns which, according to recent news, may have contained plagiarized material.
I had asked Kerr earlier this morning whether her company was taking any action in response to these published claims.
In an email, Kerr thanked me for bringing the assertions to UPS’s attention, and asked me to get a copy of the report to them. “If Mr. Barrie would be so kind to send Lee Salem, President and Editor of Universal Press Syndicate his report, we will be happy to review it. Until we do, there’s little we can say about it,” she wrote me. John Barrie was the New York Post‘s expert source who claimed to have identified Coulter’s plagiarized passages.
In my reply, I explained to Kerr that Barrie had been quoted not by me but by the New York Post, and perhaps that paper would be a good source of information. Kerr replied: “we have no contact information.”
A few minutes later, however, Ms. Kerr located Barrie’s contact information on the Web and said she would try to call him herself. Moments later, another email from Ms. Kerr arrived: “I’ve left Mr. Barrie a message.”
Sounds like the Coulter plagiarism investigation is off to a flying start. I’ve put in a call myself to Mr. Barrie, and am waiting to hear back. I’ll let you know what I find out.
