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."
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