Elizabeth Nickson

Elizabeth Nickson is a Canadian writer and journalist. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, she was European bureau chief of Life magazine.

In 2002, Elizabeth Nickson's column at the National Post was terminated due to a case of plagiarism.

Canada’s National Post has dismissed a columnist due to concerns over plagiarism. The news broke in an Editor’s Note the paper ran on Friday:

“In freelancer Elizabeth Nickson’s column in the National Post of May 31, 2002, the following words should have been attributed to Jonah Goldberg of National Review Online:

"Kim Basinger is ‘allergic’ to the sun and requires an assistant to carry an umbrella to protect her on the off chance she might be exposed to dangerous solar radiation. Sylvester Stallone once refused to continue with an interview until his hotel room was painted a more ‘likable’ peach. Mike Myers almost quit the filming of Wayne’s World because he didn’t have any margarine for his bagel. Sean Penn made an assistant swim the dangerous and polluted currents of New York’s East River just to bring him a cigarette. Jennifer Lopez is just one of the many stars who does not permit her employees to look her in the eyes."

These sentences, as they appeared in Ms. Nickson’s column published two and a half years ago, were slightly revised from Mr. Goldberg’s original article that appeared a year earlier in 2001. The National Post regrets the omission of the attribution to Mr. Goldberg and the National Review.

While Ms. Nickson indicated that her failure to attribute the passage was inadvertent, the Post has decided to discontinue her weekly freelance column.”

Works

• The Monkey Puzzle Tree, Trafalgar Square (1995) ISBN 0-7475-2038-0
• Eco-Fascists: How Radical Conservationists Are Destroying Our Natural Heritage, Broadside (2012) ISBN 0-06-208003-2