Did Stephen Edward Ambrose plagiarised his book?

Communication 101

Stephen Edward Ambrose was an American biographer and historian born in 1936 and died in 2002. He was accused of plagiarizing some of the texts in his book, The Wild Blue by Fred Barnes of the ‘Weekly Standard’s’. Barnes wrote that Stephen picked some of the passages from Thomas Childer who was also a historian. He wrote them as footnotes and did not quote the source suggesting they were his own. Mark Lewis of Forbes.com also accused Stephen for picking some sentences from a biography written by Jay Monaghan. 

In addition, David Kirkpatrick of The New York Times also noticed that Stephen had more plagiarized texts in his book, The Wild Blue (Plotz, 2002). Fred Barnes and Thomas Childer discovered what Stephen had done. He went ahead and apologized for his mistake. Stephen promised to put the passages in quotations in his next book and was forgiven for the mistake he had done. Based on the other accusations, Ambrose defended himself and said he was a writer who was out to tell the people a story. He further said he picked some sentences because they could fit in his story. 

Liberty University’s Code of Honor defines plagiarism as “omitting quotation marks or other conventional markings around material quoted from any printed source, paraphrasing a specific message from a specific source without properly referencing the source and also replicating another student’s work or parts thereof and submitting it as an original” (Heady, n.d).

Plagiarism is wrong because it makes the original authors not to get credit for their work. It also makes the student less creative and innovative. He or she is not able to think out of the box and come up with new ideas. Plagiarism also makes a person a liar or cheater. One is not able to admit that this work was done by someone else through citing or quoting and hence takesthe credit for the work they have not done. If the work is not original, then it must be clearly cited or quoted and a proper reference list given by the author (Foust, 2011).

References

Foust, K. (2011). Plagiarism: What it is and why it is wrong. International Journal of Social Sciences . Retrieved October 9, 2016 http://www.brighthub.com/education/online-learning/articles/35421.aspx

Heady, E (n.d). Writing with Integrity: Understanding Liberty University’s Code of Honor. Graduate Writing Center

Plotz, D. (2002). The Plagiarist: Why Stephen Ambrose is a Vampire. Retrieved October 9, 2016 from http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/assesment/2002/01/the_plagiarist.html