NYT Editors' Note Concedes Reporter Stole from Wall St. Journal

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Prompted by a letter from Wall St. Journal Managing Editor Robert Thomson to Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times citing a purported half-dozen  instances of Times reporter Zachery Kouwe plagiarizing text from Journal writer Amir Efrati's Feb. 5 story concerning an agreement that froze the assets of relatives of Bernard Madoff, the Times published an Editor's Note acknowledging several articles over the past year in which Kouwe allegedly reused language from Journal and Reuters stories without attribution.

The Times said an internal investigation is ongoing and has yet to comment on the fate of Kouwe.  Appropriating the work of another reporter and taking credit for it is a serious ethical breach. Oddly, the Times Editor's Note states that nothing allegedly filched by Kouwe in his articles appears to be inaccurate. Is the Times lauding Kouwe for allegedly being a careful thief or damning him with faint praise by suggesting that at least he didn't make stories up out of whole cloth like former Times scribe Jayson Blair?