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The announcements from the left-wing Media Matters group get funnier all the time. The organization is complaining that some news outlets have accurately reported that Senator Joseph Biden, picked as Barack Obama's running mate, was drummed out of the 1988 presidential race for plagiarism. Media Matters' criticism of this truthful account is that Biden on some other occasions had given credit to the person he stole the words from―a British politician named Neil Kinnock.

"Media outlets reported allegations Biden plagiarized Kinnock, but not that he had previously credited him," says the Media Matters headline. (web site) This is like saying that a convicted shoplifter paid for some items before and after he was caught stealing.

Why on earth was Biden using somebody else's words, in the context of describing his own upbringing, in the first place?

It wasn't just a matter of using a few words. You can see a striking comparison of the Biden and Kinnock speeches here. (web site) Ironically, this website, devoted to the proper techniques of college writing, says that plagiarism "can destroy a career." It hasn't destroyed Biden's.

Rather than take the ridiculously absurd Media Matters line, New York Times reporters Adam Nagourney and Jeff Zeleny reported that Biden "quit the 1988 presidential race in the face of accusations that he had plagiarized part of a speech from Neil Kinnock, the British Labor Party leader at the time" and that "Shortly afterward, he was found to have suffered two aneurysms."

Are they trying to imply that his brain problems accounted for the plagiarism? That doesn't make any sense because it was also discovered that Biden had been found guilty of plagiarism in law school. But the Times didn't mention that. It also came out that Biden had lifted material from a Bobby Kennedy speech.

Dan Balz of the Washington Post took a different line. "Biden also will have his 1988 presidential campaign and the charges of plagiarism that drove him from the race resurrected, at least in these opening days as he is introduced as Obama's running mate. But that experience is long in the past and probably does not present a significant problem," he said.

On what basis does he make the conclusion that it probably won't be a significant problem? There is none. This is simply the preference of the major media, which will do their best to make sure it is not a significant problem. But when plagiarism happens in journalism, it is supposed to be a big deal.

Taking a different tack, Fred Barnes, a writer for The Weekly Standard and Fox News Channel commentator, said Biden had a "tendency to exaggerate or embellish his accomplishments" but that his political career "has flourished" since these incidents. He decided not even to use the word plagiarism.

As children are sent off to school and parents and teachers tell them that they are not supposed to cheat in their studies, this is not an unimportant matter. How do you explain to your children that they should be honest in their studies when somebody guilty of plagiarism is a sitting member of the Senate and is running for vice-president? What does this say about the character and integrity of the presidential nominee who picked him? Obama must have figured that since the major media have failed to seriously examine his background, they would be prepared to overlook or at least minimize Biden's history of plagiarism. It was a good bet.

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