Details on What Matt Taibbi Calls an "Attribution Issue"

I have already posted on my shock, shock I tell you, on Matt Taibbi's "Attribution Issue" with regard to his recent Rolling Stones piece.

Abe Sauer at The Awl reports the details of what Taibbi calls the "Attribution Issue" versus plagiarism:

For example, in the Rolling Stone piece, Taibbi writes:

"For the most part, though, Bachmann's upbringing seems like pure Americana, a typical Midwestern girl who was 'in a couple of beauty pageants' and 'not overtly political,' according to her stepbrother Michael LaFave."

Compare that to the 2006 City Pages profile of Bachmann, "The Chosen One," which interviewed LaFave:

"By his own admission, LaFave, 51 years old and a union representative who lives in Forest Lake, did not get to know his new stepsister all that well. 'I remember that she was book-smart, and did pretty well in school,' he recalls. 'And she was in a couple of beauty pageants.... She was not overtly political.'"

Another passage from that same 2006 City Pages profile:

Stephens and other parents soon had confrontational meetings with Bachmann and the rest of the charter school group. 'One member of Michele's entourage talked about how he had visions, and that God spoke to him directly,' Stephens says. 'He told us that as Christians we had to lay our lives down for it. I remember getting in the car with my husband afterward and telling him, 'This is a cult.'

Rolling Stone:

'One member of Michele's entourage talked about how he had visions, and that God spoke to him directly,' recalled Denise Stephens, a parent who was opposed to the religious curriculum at New Heights. 'He told us that as Christians we had to lay our lives down for it. I remember getting in the car with my husband afterward and telling him, 'This is a cult.''

City Pages, 2006:

'I came in wearing jeans, a sweatshirt and moccasins, and I had no makeup on at all,' the story quotes Bachmann as saying. 'I had not one piece of literature, I had made not one phone call, and spent not five cents and I did not solicit a vote.'

Rolling Stone:

'I came in wearing jeans, a sweatshirt and moccasins, and I had no makeup on at all,' she said. 'I had made not one phone call, and spent not five cents, and I did not solicit a vote.'

Looks like Rolling Stone executive editor Eric Bates is the designated Rolling Stone fall guy on this one. Sauer writes:

Rolling Stone executive editor Eric Bates told me that this was his doing—that due to space concerns, two of Taibbi's original notes attributing work to the City Pages piece had been removed, to save space.

 
Others in the know, that I have talked to, suspect that this is more blatant lifting by Taibbi than he normally does, but that it has his fingerprints all over it. They tell me his "attribution issue" goes way back. In fact, one critic suggested that Taibbi has never done an original bit of thinking or research in his life.