Sometimes when I read the writing of others, I feel as if the voice is my own.

This morning, when I read Amir Mir’s report in The News, I realized some of the words were my own.

Wednesday morning (Pakistan time), I wrote these words in my post, eighteen hours before Amir Mir’s report in the Thursday edition of The News became available online and in print:

“…the attack was a hybrid operation consisting of an armed attack by four gunmen and a subsequent detonation of a car bomb…”

And Amir Mir in Thursday’s The News wrote:

“Those investigating the assault say the attack was a hybrid operation, consisting of an armed attack by four gunmen and subsequent detonation of a car bomb…”

The difference?  A mere comma.  Mir prefaced his plagiarism with: “Those investigating the assault…”

I am not among those investigating the assault.

I thought Amir Mir was a more respectable journalist than his brother, Hamid Mir.  Unfortunately, I was wrong; he doesn’t possess basic journalistic ethics.

Buddy, you can quote me next time you copy and paste stuff from my blog.  It’s not the end of the world, but plagiarism is a major sin in the journalism community.