BOB GARFIELD: Another pesky reporting problem that's received a lot of attention in recent days is plagiarism. Last week in his weekly column on the NPR website, ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin answered complaints about an interview segment on All Things Considered in April. He conceded that the segment had basically rehashed an L.A. Times article without advancing the story at all, and that the program should have credited the newspaper. It wasn't the first time NPR had been accused of lifting a story without proper attribution. This week on Jim Romenesko's media news website, one visitor expressed great satisfaction with NPR's apology, but, he remarked, other broadcast media outlets should also come clean. The writer, investigative reporter Jeff Stein, says he's been the victim of quote "routine broadcast media thievery," most recently when 60 Minutes reported a story he had covered two years earlier. Jeff Stein, welcome to the show.

JEFF STEIN: Thanks. Nice to be here.

BOB GARFIELD: Tell me first please about this article you wrote for Salon two years ago.

JEFF STEIN: Well it was a strange and bizarre story about a young woman who had written a freelance article about the owners of the Ringling Bros. Circus, and the owner of the circus was so upset by this article that he hired the former head of operations, i.e., "dirty tricks," at the CIA to turn her life upside down and make it miserable, ruin her career. And for 8 years, the CIA guy, by the name of Clair George, carried out a plan of dirty tricks against the woman named Jan Pottker treating her like she was Guatemala! [LAUGHTER] They followed her around; they filed intelligence reports on her -- and only through kind of an - a quirk did she find out about it 8 years later, and now she's suing them for a hundred million dollars.

BOB GARFIELD: Well it's an amazing story, and it's thoroughly documented, largely with some of the court papers from her suit, but you invested in order to get all of the proper documentation a lot of time. How many man hours would you estimate that you put into the circus story?

JEFF STEIN: I would say I spent 8 to 10 hours a day, 5 days a week or 6 days a week for about 6 weeks.

BOB GARFIELD: So your 9,000 word piece broke on Salon.com two years ago and got some followup -- not a whole lot in the mainstream press--

JEFF STEIN: There it sat dormant until I got a bunch of telephone calls a couple of weekends ago --people seeing the listing for 60 Minutes doing the story and saying oh, are you going to be on 60 Minutes?

BOB GARFIELD: [LAUGHS] Okay, and now you knew to a moral certainty that you weren't going to be on 60 Minutes because they never called you for an interview on this story. What was the story on 60 Minutes?

JEFF STEIN: The story on 60 Minutes included the basics of my story. They didn't do any original reporting as far as I can tell, and in fact the story omitted a few crucial details that signaled to me that they hadn't even gone down to the courthouse and done their own laborious research on the documents. They did get an extensive interview with Jan Pottker, the freelance writer who had been victimized by the circus and its spies, and she hadn't talked to me much, but it was basically television kind of journalism where she got to say I was an innocent victim.

BOB GARFIELD: Was there in the piece reported by Morley Safer any reference to your story on Salon.com?

JEFF STEIN: Mmmm! None. Not a bit.

BOB GARFIELD: Okay, so you're sitting there and you're watching this -- I imagine your jaw at that point is resting somewhere in the proximity of your chest. What were you thinking?

JEFF STEIN: Well at first I was appalled and felt really ripped off, but then this had happened to me before with 60 Minutes and other television magazine shows -- I've been in journalism for 25 years -- and I've seen my stories ripped off a number of times, and in particular 60 Minutes. I can think if three offhand that they just took my story and filmed it.

BOB GARFIELD: Okay. Now what you're describing Jeff -- it's not strictly speaking plagiarism.

JEFF STEIN: No.

BOB GARFIELD: They didn't take your words or ideas and present them as their own. But it, it is something, and it's something that I think is quite common in broadcast journalism -- using somebody else's reporting as a template to basically reproduce the reporting only this time on tape. What's wrong with doing business that way?

JEFF STEIN: Well, I'll give an example of what's wrong. Just a couple of days ago, the New York Times followed up on a story that my publication, Congressional Quarterly, had broken, and in the third paragraph, they said "Story first reported by Congressional Quarterly." That's the way you should to it. And then they went out and did their own reporting. They confirmed the details in our story, and then they advanced it a little.

BOB GARFIELD: So it's something as simple as just a nod of the head towards the news organization that originally did the story. If you offer that nod of the head, are you then free to do exactly what is so often done, which is go to the very same sources named in let's say the print story and to just reinvent the wheel?

JEFF STEIN: Yeah, I think that they are, but they must give attribution! It's unethical to take someone else's story as if -- and that's the strong implication here -- as if you are breaking the story -- when in fact someone else has broken that story. And I just think it's wrong! It's thievery.

BOB GARFIELD: And it's pretty much standard operating procedure. What do you suppose it is about broadcast journalism that it believes it has license to operate this way?

JEFF STEIN: You know -- I am mystified by this. Maybe it's because it's just the way it's always been, and no one has really challenged them. And maybe there's a test case that should be done, challenging these networks. It would be very healthy for everyone. But I'm not very litigious. But I think I might sit down and talk to a media lawyer about it and see if there's a case to be made. Maybe that's the way to get attention to the issue is sue 'em.

BOB GARFIELD: All right. Well, Jeff, thank you very much.

JEFF STEIN: Thank you.

BOB GARFIELD: Investigative reporter Jeff Stein is also the editor of Congressional Quarterly's Homeland Security website. We called 60 Minutes about his allegations. Spokesperson Kevin Tedesco acknowledged that the story about the freelance writer and the Ringling Bros. CEO had been broken by Stein but insisted that 60 Minutes was quote "under no ethical obligation" to attribute the story to him. And CBS News sent us this statement. "Print and broadcast journalists report every day on stories previously covered in some way, but they advance them, and in doing so further inform the public. We advanced this story by landing the first extended interview the main character, Jan Pottker, has ever given on the subject. Pottker was not interviewed in Mr. Stein's original article." [MUSIC]