WEB EXCLUSIVE: Neither the kids nor the adults are all right

As the saying goes, things happen, and they aren’t always good things, even when they start out with the best of intentions.

It seems no sooner was a guest column by Pasadena Unified School District Superintendent Percy Clark Jr. published in our paper and on our Web site Wednesday night than political consultant Martin Truitt, and later schools activist Rene Amy, started claiming Clark had plagiarized portions of his column.

Now, as it turns out, the people who are doing all the complaining about Clark may have done something similarly unethical, at least from a journalism perspective, in their efforts to get the word out about Clark’s alleged plagiarism.

I’ll get into all that a little bit more in a second. But first, let me begin by saying the newspaper and the superintendent have not had the best of relationships. In fact, we’ve editorialized on how Clark should be dismissed from his current post for reasons too numerous to explain here. But, against our recommendation, the Board of Education decided to renew Clark’s contract anyway, and it appeared as though he would be with us for a while.

It was in that spirit that I accepted an invitation by city Human Relations Commission Chairman Nat Nehdar to have lunch with him and Clark.

I normally do not take lunches, and rarely do I eat with public officials when I do. But this appeared to be a good opportunity to talk with the superintendent on a less confrontational level than usual, and so we found ourselves sitting across from one another at a table at Lovebirds Café — of all places — on Colorado Boulevard.

The title of Clark’s piece was “Kasserian ingera,” which means “Are the children well?” It’s used by the Masai people of Africa as a way of indicating that culture’s abiding respect for its children. During nearly an hour together, this was a theme that Clark stuck to pretty religiously, and he spoke quite eloquently about these concepts. In fact, this was really ALL Clark talked about: How other cultures — and specifically the ones he used as examples in his piece — treasure children and ours doesn't.

I can't remember word-for-word what was said, but as I first read his piece emailed to me on April 27, I recalled what Clark had said to Nat and me that day, especially about the Masai, and I thought of the little bit that I knew of the Masai, information which I considered to be fairly common knowledge, and it all seemed OK.

I don't normally rip apart every single line that someone writes as a guest columnist, unless, of course, their remarks throw into question a person's integrity or ability and thus require some sort of fair comment or deletion.

Actually, that’s why we set aside a space for a guest column: So that leaders and regular citizens alike could have a chance to speak their minds from the pages of their local newspaper. The same offer that was extended to Clark was similar to ones made to Police Chief Bernard Melekian, Mayor Bill Bogaard, Congressman Adam Schiff and a host of others who have all graciously accepted our offer over the years.

Like mine, the many other sets of eyes who read this stuff each week would also be taking second and sometimes third or fourth looks if a column contained some other potentially dangerous or libelous thing, which Clark’s piece did not.

In hindsight, I suppose we should have checked every word, but we do not do that with the other leaders in their fields, who are supposed to write with the authority that their positions afford them. I generally expect people who write for us, especially non-journalists and public officials, to do their homework before turning something in. Like all those other times, everything in this case seemed to be in order.

With regard to Clark’s assessments in the beginning of his piece on the state of the Pasadena Unified's scholastic performance, I believe we would all expect the superintendent to be able to report the facts on that, given that is the same information that he would be asked to give us as a source if we were to do a story on those issues, which we have done.

In the other references, specifically those about the Masai, perhaps I should have gone back and found out where that phrase and those customs really came from. But, as I said, this image is nothing new. In fact, as we’ve learned since, the sermon that Clark has been accused of plagiarizing has been reprinted and quoted extensively over the years on literally dozens of pages on the Internet, with other pages simply referring to it, perhaps explaining why it seemed to be fairly common knowledge.

After looking at the passages in question, it appears some words and phrases were lifted verbatim and then used by Clark. Other parts of the speech were paraphrased or changed slightly.

The question is: Is Clark guilty of plagiarism, or did he merely use material that he did not properly attribute?

Would that attribution at the top of the portion of his column in which he quotes the sermon been enough to satisfy those who are now calling for Clark’s head because of their perceptions of plagiarism on his part?

Not one to let opportunity slip by, Amy, who is himself a regular guest column contributor to the Weekly and was expected to have a column in this week on a schools-related matter, has posted all the material in question about Clark’s column on his Greatschools Internet listserve.

At first, it seemed as though Amy had dug all this stuff up by himself. But, as we only found out late Thursday afternoon, after Amy had already posted umpteen messages about the issue, we learned that it was really Truitt, the fellow who ran School Board member Scott Phelps’ campaign, who actually found the tracts of text in question. He then handed them over to Amy to post on his listserve, which Amy did, but without ever saying where he got the information.

In this instance, is that a little bit like the pot calling the kettle black?

On Thursday Clark maintained he did nothing wrong, but said he did not yet wish to comment further.

The Star-News and the LA Times have both called the paper for some comment on the column. That’s because Amy tipped off every reporter he could think of and even visited the Weekly offices Thursday morning to tell us all about what he had “learned” about Clark’s column.

He never mentioned at that time that it was really Truitt who had initially dug all the stuff up on Clark. Amy even admitted that he did not attribute the information in his post to anyone.

“I receive information from a lot of people on the list who wish to remain anonymous,” Amy told Weekly reporter André Coleman. “They will put a tip in my email, and I will research it and verify it, but format it in a way I see fit, all before posting it. I tend to work to provide a level of masking. When it’s a district employee, I will change genders, not always, so that the person cannot be tracked. I really don’t care what the source is. My issue is getting information out.”

As for Truitt, “He provided me essentially the lead and some of the comparisons. I looked further and spent about an hour and a half researching the issue, and then what I did was put it in a format that was readable and understandable.”

“There is an expectation that the information that [Truitt] provides to me will be posted on the list. I look at what people will send me and decide on my own if it’s valid information of interest to the list,” Amy said.

“When you get right down to it,” Amy explained about his explosion of unattributed posts, “all of those words are mine, except those that are Percy’s or the other source’s.”

Maybe all the kids really are well in Africa, as the Masai say. But, of course, without looking anything up, we know those are just words, because those kids are not all right, just as we know public school children in this country are in bigger trouble than they’ve ever been.

Maybe it’s a good thing this happened, because it’s behavior like this on the part of the “adults” involved that may explain, at least in part, why that is.