Saturday, May 7, 2005

Pearce sorry about column

He said he was unaware staffer, who has resigned, copied it from Web site

Dana L. Bowley El Defensor Chieftain Editor

U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce has apologized for an opinion column submitted to New Mexico newspapers that carried his name but was actually taken from another source.

Pearce said he did not know the column was not original and that the staff member who prepared it has quit.

"Frankly, I'm embarrassed," Pearce said in a telephone call late Tuesday to El Defensor Chieftain from his Washington, D.C., office. "The employee who put the column together has resigned."

Pearce was responding to an editorial in the April 30 Chieftain critical of his office for the April op-ed column on gasoline prices put out under his name that proved to be nearly a word-for-word repeat of a column that appeared on the Web site of a conservative Washington think tank.

He said the editorial was the first indication he had that the column was not original.

"I was absolutely not aware of it" until the editorial appeared, he said. "It was an extreme error in judgment, and I'm certainly sorry it happened."

The Chieftain has since learned that the March column was also substantially taken from other sources. Pearce said he could not rule out that others might have been as well.

The congressman's press secretary, Jim Burns, resigned Monday after admitting he had taken most of the column from the Web site of the conservative Heritage Foundation. He told the Albuquerque Journal that "there might have been" other instances of unattributed material from other sources in speeches and news columns he wrote on Pearce's behalf.

"What I did was wrong," Burns told the Journal on Wednesday. "It was a colossal error in judgment. Rather than stay on and embarrass the congressman, I am leaving."

Burns, a 52-year-old former reporter for United Press International, has been Pearce's press secretary since January.

It was to Burns that the Chieftain sent an e-mail complaining about the energy column, an e-mail that went unanswered, prior to the editorial.

It is common practice for congressional staffers to draft speeches and guest columns for their bosses. However, it is not considered acceptable on Capitol Hill, or elsewhere, to reproduce others' words and ideas without permission and attribution.

"Every office on the Hill operates under the assumption that the press secretary is using original material," Greg Hill, the congressman's chief-of-staff, told the Journal. "We learned of it, we dealt with it, and we're moving on."

Pearce told the Chieftain that when he first went to Washington, he wrote the "Straight Talk" column himself, but turned it over to his staff to write, under his direction, as the press of congressional business became too great.

While not excusing the incident, he said he understands how it could happen. He said his staff is stretched thin right now and he was without a chief of staff until about a month ago.

"It's very busy here right now and everyone is working extra hard," he said, "but that's no excuse for taking shortcuts."

He offered assurance that future columns would be original.

(Albuquerque Journal Washington correspondent Michael Coleman contributed to this report.)

editorial@dchieftain.com

E-mail this story Printer-friendly version