Random House stands by Coulter

Random House's Crown Forum is dismissing the plagiarism charges against Ann Coulter. NewsMax quotes Steve Ross, SVP of the Crown imprint, as saying, "We have reviewed the allegations of plagiarism surrounding ‘Godless’ and found them to be as trivial and meritless as they are irresponsible."

While it's understandable why liberals and left-leaning publications like Editor & Publisher would want to discredit Coulter, I'm most curious to learn how iThenticate fits into all this. The publishing industry desperately needs IP (intellectual property) software like this. Did the software return a false positive, indicating that it's not ready for prime time? Were its results being manipulated by a left-winger to score partisan points? Or a PR-hungry executive, hoping to get his startup's name in the papers?

Let's hope that Ann and her fans pursue this point. It's not only important because of her reputation, but also because the rest of us in this peculiar industry need to know if tools like iThenticate are something we can rely on.