The Daily Show's signature trick of mashing up cable news soundbites to take entire conversations out of context and create a funny bit is, well, brilliant. So brilliant, in fact, that Dan Abrams has been repurposing the tactic for his own MSNBC show, now renamed Verdict. Even we talked about it, and our standards for Talking About Things are fractions of a point among the industry average.

Curious, then, that another show has been borrowing from Jon Stewart's playbook: Howard Kurtz's Reliable Sources. And not only is the CNN show taking liberty with The Daily Show's skill set, but they're nearly copying Dan Abrams's copying.

As Rachel Sklar reports, "Kurtz showcased three corrspondents: FNC's Eric Shawn, CNN's Jason Carroll and ABC's Brian Ross, in that order. Earlier in the week on Abrams' regular "Beat The Press" segment, they featured the following: Two clips from Eric Shawn, Jason Carroll on CNN, John Roberts on CNN, and Brian Ross on ABC, in that order."

It's hard to argue sequence-based plagiarism. But it isn't hard to argue Kurtz's team knew all about Abrams' segment, given they featured a clip from the very Abrams show they lifted from.

As they say: Roll that beautiful bean footage!

From Live with Dan Abrams, March 11, 2007:

From Reliable Sources, March 16, 2007: