It's one thing for drug addicts and Harvard kids to lie in their books. Whether it's lifting passages from other authors like Kaavya Viswanathan or flat out making up entire stories and passing them off as real life (a'la James Frey) the fact that novelists will take their creative writing to another level is nothing new.
But when a journalists plagiarizes in a book? Well, it's a bigger deal. And though it's gossip from the pages of Rush & Molloy, we can't sit idly by knowing that you might read Nancy Grace's book, Objection! How High-Priced Defense Attorneys, Celebrity Defendants, and a 24/7 Media Have Hijacked Our Criminal Justice System, with no knowledge that she ripped off a paragraph from the New York Times.
Grace was happy to hype the book, which spent five weeks on The New York Times best-seller list. She was less eager to draw attention to the fact that she'd lifted huge, verbatim passages in the book from that newspaper.
Though Grace mentions the column she lifted from in the bibliography (an August 5, 2002 column called "Patents" column by Sabra Chartrand) only when the book hit hardcover that she noted the 359 words that came from the article.
Grace maintains that the 359 insults she slung at Melinda Duckett, however, were completely original.
Nancy falling from Grace over book? [Rush & Molloy, Daily News]
Editorial Director
MSNBC reports “A federal grand jury on Thursday indicted a Missouri woman for her alleged role in perpetrating a hoax on the online social network MySpace against a 13-year-old neighbor who committed suicide. Lori Drew of suburban St. Louis allegedly helped create a false-identity MySpace account to contact Megan Meier, who thought she was chatting with a 16-year-old boy named Josh Evans. Josh didn't exist. Megan hanged herself at home in October 2006 after receiving cruel messages, including one stating the world would be better off without her.” This is one of the same types of crimes Nancy Grace did against the late Melinda Duckett, and Nancy and CNN are alleged to have paid out tens-of-millions in dollars to settle this lawsuit against them. With a ordered-contingency against discussing the crimes of Nancy Grace in this case, CNN was not able to respond to MSNBC’s repeated requests for further comments and explanations. Nancy should definitely be in prison for these and other crimes she has committed against real victims. Click on the Link to help give Nancy a hand.