New Zealand Labour Party Apologizes for Plagiarism – iThenticate Blog Post

Plagiarism in politics is, unfortunately, nothing new. Germany, for example, went through a rocky period where a series of high-level government officials were forced to resign due to plagiarism in their dissertations.

In the U.S. we have our own examples of plagiarism scandals such as Vice President Joe Biden’s famous scandal (which is making a resurgence in the news) and the more recent one that tanked the campaign of Senator John Walsh.

However, a recent case in New Zealand shakes things up a bit as the document involved wasn’t meant to represent just one candidate, but rather, the entire party.

There, the Labor Party, the second-largest party in the country, published its Future of Work document, a piece want to be a cornerstone of its 2017 campaign. However, a disgruntled ex-party member discovered that portions of the document were lifted verbatim from The Economist and publications owned by that magazine.

It’s a pretty unusual story and one that I’m glad I got to cover in much more detail on the iThenticate blog.

This post looks at:

1. How the scandal happened and what mistakes were made.
2. What the fallout from the scandal is.
3. Most importantly, what can be done to prevent future mistakes like this.

So, if you have a moment, check out the full post and feel free to leave a comment.

Disclosure: I am a paid consultant and author for iThenticate & WriteCheck.