Letter: Failed Grade for latest column

I am writing regarding the column Check It Out in the October 25th issue titled “Life after professional hockey”.

This was written as an interview with former pro hockey player Theo Fleury.

But was it an interview? Or were the quotes taken from a book, a magazine article, a radio broadcast, a television show?

We will never know because the writer broke one of the cardinal rules of both journalism and academia: she did not quote her source.

In other words, she committed a form of plagerism.

People have lost jobs and been denied academic degrees for this.

Further, while the column is mostly about Fleury, the writer shows her political bias by taking a stab at the Prime Minister.

I have no quarrel in principle with criticizing the Prime Minister, or any other politician, if the criticism is warranted and in context.

In this case, the writer apparently found a negative quote she liked and inserted it, thus weakening her column which reads perfectly well if the paragraph is deleted.

Despite some interesting quotes by Fleury (or are they? We can’t be sure without source information) this column unfortunately rates an F, in one case for what is left out, in another for what is included.

Verna Thompson
Eston, Sask.