By: The Fort Worth Star-Telegram's television critic resigned after editors identified instances of apparent plagiarism in his work over a two-year period, the newspaper said Friday.
Several stories and columns by Ken Parish Perkins, who worked at the newspaper nine years, contained whole sentences or long phrases taken verbatim from other publications and Web sites, without attribution, the paper said in a note to readers.
Editors started reviewing Perkins' work after someone last week pointed out that a Nov. 10 item included a paragraph that had appeared verbatim in Entertainment Weekly magazine.
The review determined that Perkins had violated an ethics policy governing attribution of material that was not original, the newspaper's ombudsman, David House, said in a column outlining the paper's policies against plagiarism and fabrication.
"We're all quite stunned and saddened by this," Executive Editor Jim Witt said in House's column. "Ken has been one of our best writers and hardest workers at the paper. He's always been someone we can depend on - that's why it's so hard for us to understand why this happened."
"We've always considered him to be someone with high ethical standards. But ultimately we have to be able to trust our reporters. Our credibility with our readers is the most valuable thing we have, and we can't afford to do anything that might jeopardize the confidence they have in us."
Nearly all the content in question involved background material located toward the end of the stories, House said in his column.
Perkins could not be immediately reached for comment; there were multiple listings for Ken Perkins and K. Perkins in the area.
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