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Tomas Kaberle’s father figures he’ll be traded this year, sparks Internet firestorm over plagiarism

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If you haven’t had enough of Tomas Kaberle this summer, buckle up because the Kaberle soap opera has found a new way to get interesting. Czech website hokej.cz scored an interview with Tomas Kaberle’s father Frantisek to find out his thoughts about how things have been handled with his son in Toronto. To say the least he isn’t too pleased with the Leafs and thinks that Tomas will be traded this year. We were able to find this information out because the guys at Pension Plan Puppets were able to get someone to translate the story from Czech to English for them.

The possibility of moving Tomas Kaberle from Toronto has already been discussed for many years now and it was generally expected to happen just after the end of last year. “I have to admit that I expected it a bit too. I really don’t understand Tomas staying on in Toronto,” said Frantisek Kaberle senior, shaking his head. The native of Rakovnik, the Czech Republic, last year racked up a total of forty-nine points, and was one of the most valued defenders on the team.

Yet, Frantisek Kaberle senior does not fully embrace his son remaining on the Canadian team. “I can’t imagine how it will be to get along with Ron Wilson, who relies primarily on aggression and stress. And that’s not Tomas, he is a technical type of defender,” he said. Despite the fact of earning an excellent reputation over the course of eleven seasons in the NHL, he can get less ice-time in the following year.

It’s fascinating stuff to get this information, especially from sources we really don’t get too exposed to here in North America because, well, most of us can’t speak or read Czech (or other languages for that matter). What’s turned this story on its ear today, however, is that Dave Fuller of the Toronto Sun has a story today on their site discussing this same issue from Frantisek Kaberle.

There’s one problem between what Pension Plan Puppets have in their straight translation of the story and what Fuller’s piece in the Toronto Sun has. They each have the same, exact translation of Kaberle’s words. We’ve got ourselves some controversy. Even crazier still, Pension Plan Puppets had this covered two days ago. Meanwhile the Sun is running with it today. Making matters more difficult here is that now larger websites and hockey resources are using the Toronto Sun and their apparently plagiarized from Pension Plan Puppets quotes to go forth and run with the story. Such is the case with The Hockey News and Canada’s Sportsnet.

What’s at stake here is accountability and sourcing. Pension Plan Puppets sourced where they got the story from and found someone of their own to translate it for them. Meanwhile, Dave Fuller and The Toronto Sun lifted the translate quotes from their site and offered no citation for it. While the Sun’s editors have tried to explain it away saying the used Google translation to get the quotes, some have gone so far as to compare all three sets of quotes. Game, set, and match.

As the war between mainstream and traditional journalists with their blogging counterparts rages on, mainstream media’s move to the Internet to keep up with the times is finding out that life is a lot tougher when there are people that spend more time focusing on one section of sports.

While many journalists are reticent to let bloggers into their “professional” club, turning into the sort of worker that they’ve always claimed Internet denizens to be like is an ironic twist of fate they should do their best to avoid if they want to remain relevant. Just like in college when I had to write a research paper, citing your sources keeps you out of trouble. I never thought anything I learned in freshman year composition class would ever be so useful in the real world. Perhaps Dave Fuller and the staff at the Toronto Sun skipped out on those classes.