THE SCRAPBOOK reports on Deborah Solomon's recent work in the Times and the Times's tough ethical standards: Solomonic Questioning

Like many readers of the New York Times Magazine, THE SCRAPBOOK has whittled down its consumption over the years, skipping past the breathless profiles of Hollywood hunks, surreal comic strips, heroin-chic fashion layouts, and an "ethics" column written (literally) by a stand-up comedian. Our weekly reading is now confined to the obscenely expensive real estate ads in the back, and the "Questions For" column, conducted by Deborah Solomon.

We may soon be down to just the housing porn.

The purpose of the "Questions For" column, in accordance with standard Times editorial policy, is to grovel before people the Times admires and excoriate those of whom the Times disapproves. Deborah Solomon is nothing if not a reliable Times employee, so you can imagine the difference in tone between the questions put to William Ayers, for example, and those to anyone remotely right-of-center. For Ayers, Solomon was playful and affectionate, a little like a college director of admissions interviewing a surly lacrosse player she desperately wants to recruit. Toward conservatives she expresses cold disapproval, with lots of hostile follow-up inquiries.

Readers can also imagine Solomon's dilemma recently when she interviewed Dambisa Moyo, a young Zambian economist with an Oxford Ph.D. who has worked at Goldman Sachs and the World Bank. Moyo is the author of a well-received and recently published book-- Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way For Africa (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 208 pp., $24)--which argues that Bono-inspired assistance for impoverished Africa is worse than useless: Not only is most of it siphoned off by corrupt regimes, it perpetuates dependency, deepening poverty and despair. Clearly, Solomon was horrified by Moyo's radical common sense, but knew she couldn't treat an African overachiever with quite the same contempt reserved for a Republican. Her interview style had the strained quality of someone who wanted to wring her subject's neck but was forced, by convention, to merely wag a finger.

To wit, Solomon's final question nicely captured her quandary and worldview: "For all your belief in the potential of capitalism, the free market is now in free fall and everyone is questioning the supposed wonders of the unregulated market." But she had clearly met her match in Dambisa Moyo, who responded (no doubt with a smile): "I wish we questioned the aid model as much as we are questioning the capitalism model. Sometimes the most generous thing you can do is just say no."

Touché![...]

All the Plagiarists Fit to Print?

The New York Times, as it will be the first to brag to you if you ask, has an elaborate set of internal rules to prevent conflicts of interest and other ethical lapses by its reporters and contributors.

In a 2005 column noting the paper's increasing use of freelancers, the paper's "public editor" lamented that "there's no way someone who's working for the Times today, some other publication tomorrow and yet another on Tuesday can possibly absorb and live by the Times's complex code as fully as staff members. Unrevealed conflicts, violations of Times-specific reporting rules and a variety of other problems have repeatedly found their way to my office over the past 18 months."

One can see how that might happen with a freelancer who writes once for the paper. How is it, though, that the Times has managed to ignore violations on the part of a frequent contributor that have more than once been brought to its attention? We are assuming, for the sake of argument, that a code of conduct as "complex" as the Times's presumably disbars a writer who commits the cardinal journalistic sin of passing off the work of others as his own.

But maybe it doesn't. The Nation, in its latest issue, revisits the case of Jacob Heilbrunn, whose 2008 book on neoconservatism, They Knew They Were Right, includes several passages lifted without attribution from other writers. Here, for instance, is a passage from Heilbrunn:

On April 30, 1981, [Reagan] remarked, "Even at the negotiating table, never shall it be forgotten for a moment that wherever it is taking place in the world, the persecution of people for whatever reason . . . persecution of people for their religious belief . . . that is a matter to be on that negotiating table or the United States does not belong at that table." But the New York Times reported on the same day that "after the speech, a White House spokesman said Mr. Reagan had not meant to alter his policy of playing down the rights issue in foreign relations."

And here is Patricia Derian, in a November 7, 1981, article for the Nation:

On April 30, the New York Times quoted President Reagan as having said that "even at the negotiating table, never shall it be forgotten for a moment that wherever it is taking place in the world, the persecution of people for whatever reason . . . persecution of people for their religious belief . . . that is a matter to be on that negotiating table or the United States does not belong at that table." In the same edition of the Times, a front-page story reported that "after the speech, a White House spokesman said Mr. Reagan had not meant to alter his policy of playing down the rights issue in foreign relations."

This is the Nation's second bite at the apple. Reviewer Corey Robin first called attention to Heilbrunn's lapses last June. The Times has published Heilbrunn, a "regular contributor," seven times since then, with nary a word of explanation as to how he has managed to skate around its "complex code" of conduct. The Nation concludes that "there's still nothing like failing upward," and THE SCRAPBOOK must say it finds itself, for once, in full agreement with the left-wing weekly.