SBC's Richard Land Issues Apology for Plagiarism

Baptist Press reports:

Richard Land, recently in the news for comments about the Trayvon Martin killing, has responded to charges that he failed to attribute the comments on air to a Washington Times columnist.

In a statement to Baptist Press April 16, Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, expressed regret for the way he handled remarks on his March 31 radio broadcast.

Source

The official statement has been posted on the Richard Land Live! website, and reads in part:

“On occasion I have failed to provide appropriate verbal attributions on my radio broadcast, Richard Land Live!, and for that I sincerely apologize. I regret if anyone feels they were deceived or misled. That was not my intent nor has it ever been. Clearly there has been no attempt to deceive the public or we would not have posted the articles that are used on the air. Source

In the statement, Land also noted that he was “grateful this oversight was brought to my attention.”

On 18 April, an additional announcement was made regarding the availability of archived episodes of Land’s radio show:

We, the Executive Committee of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, have decided, with Dr. Land’s encouragement, to remove the links to past shows for the reason set forth below.

We recently became aware of instances in which Dr. Richard Land read from materials written by others during his radio show without clear and proper attribution to the authors of those materials on the program. We have also learned that news agencies occasionally access this website and use clips from Dr. Land’s past broadcasts without prior notice or permission. Due to the danger that such unauthorized use by news agencies or others might include quoted material used by Dr. Land without clear and proper credit being given to the author or source of the quoted material, we have removed links to prior radio broadcasts. Richard Land Live! will continue to post links to broadcasts from this date forward, with careful attribution given to the authors of any material quoted on air.

Source