FTVLive today hints that MSNBC’s David Shuster may have lifted info from the APAF (American Progress Action Fund) website for a blog entry on Iraq that was, according to FTV, linked by “many other blogs” and was called “honest”.

Specifically, FTV points to a series of quotes that are in the APAF article pertaining to Iraq from various Republican/Bush Administration people, which also are used in Shuster’s entry. FTV makes a pretty convincing case that Shuster could have used the APAF article as research material because the similarities between the quote selection are too similar to be easily explained away as coincidence.

But that’s not the issue for me. The issue is whether Shuster was obligated to acknowledge the APAF article in his blog entry? FTV seems to think so. But what form would that acknowledgement take? The quotes were just that…quotes. Already on the record and out in the public domain. Shuster didn’t lift any non-quotes from the APAF article (if he lifted anything at all). So if FTV is correct what was Shuster supposed to do? Say something like “Chuck Hagel said xxxxxx (according to an APAF article)” even though that info didn’t originate on APAF?

More importantly, are blogs subject to the same rules as print journalism or TV News? Heck, half the blogs out there will repeat public quotes that their authors read somewhere else without attributing to the other source unless they also include non-quote information from that source. Is it really plagiarism to properly attribute a public domain quote, apparently cited by multiple sources, to its speaker but not attribute the quote to where the article writer read the quote? That’s a tough call and one that would typically be hashed out on Romensko’s letter’s page.

I’m tending to believe that Shuster didn’t do anything particularly wrong from a blog perspective. But FTV did raise the question and Shuster needs to answer it to clarify the situation.