|
?:reviewBody
|
-
Ever since Melania Trump delivered an oddly familiar speech at the Republican National Convention in 2016, the First Lady has been dogged by accusations of plagiarism (many of which were nothing more than fake news). A new batch of allegations surfaced in May 2018, as keen-eyed readers noticed that a pamphlet linked to Trump's new Be Best campaign was nearly identical to a document released by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2014: It is true that the Be Best campaign linked to a pamphlet that was nearly identical to material published by the FTC in 2014. You can see the FTC's pamphlet, Net Cetera. Chatting with Kids About Being Online, here, and the Talking with Kids About Being Online from the White House here. These two documents are nearly identical (with the exception of an introduction from the First Lady), but it's disingenuous to say that Melania Trump plagiarized this material. The main piece of evidence supporting the plagiarism charge is that the pamphlet was originally presented on the White House web site as a booklet by First Lady Melania Trump and the Federal Trade Commission, in reference to the First Lady's having contributed an introduction to the Talking with Kids About Being Online pamphlet. That wording was soon updated to describe Talking with Kids about Being Online as a Federal Trade Commission booklet, promoted by First Lady Melania Trump. At no point did Melania Trump take credit for (or claim she had written) the entire pamphlet. Nearly every page of the Talking with Kids About Being Online pamphlet contains a link to the FTC's web site about Internet safety, and the final page lists web sites for both the Be Best campaign and the FTC's internet safety page: The White House released a contentious statement on 8 May 2018 about the plagiarism accusations:
(en)
|
![[This page as RDF]](http://data.gesis.org/claimskg/static/rdf-icon.gif){kind=icon}