Ex-NYT Exec Editor Jill Abramson Condemned for Alleged Plagiarism

“I take seriously the issues raised and will review the passages in question,” said Jill Abramson.

Former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson has been accused of plagiarism of multiple passages of her latest book, Merchants of Truth: Inside the News Revolution. She has also been accused of factual inaccuracies in reporting for the book, specifically interviews of Vice employees.

Abramson’s book is about the change in the US news industry, told through the journey of four organisations: Buzzfeed, Vice, The New York Times and The Washington Post.

In a Twitter thread, Vice News journalist Michael C Moynihan accused Abramson of lifting certain passages pertaining to Vice, a digital news organisation based in the US.

*All three* chapters on Vice were clotted with mistakes. Lots of them. The truth promised in Merchants of Truth was often not true. While trying to corroborate certain claims, I noticed that it also contained...plagiarized passages.

— Michael C Moynihan (@mcmoynihan) February 6, 2019

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Moynihan stated that he first started looking into the book after seeing "an egregious error" about Arielle Duhaime-Ross, his Vice News colleague who was wrongly identified as transgender in an initial review copy, reports BBC. Significantly, Arielle Duhaime-Ross has also accused Abramson of factual inaccuracy.

A lot of people are going to be writing about the errors and plagiarism in Jill Abramson's book in the coming days. If your outlet writes about this, please keep this in mind: https://t.co/LBWaxvYmCp

— Arielle Duhaime-Ross (@adrs) February 7, 2019

Ian Frisch, a freelance journalist and editor, also spoke up regarding Abramson using his work in her book without proper attribution. He also said, “this article was hosted on my personal website – nowhere else. So Jill went to my PERSONAL WEBSITE, lifted my reporting, and put it in her book.”

I spoke with @washingtonpost about my concerns regarding Jill Abramson's new book, and how she (or a member of her research team) seems to have cribbed my reporting.

Thanks to @TheArtist_MBS for speaking to me about this. https://t.co/AYpqStPVud

— Ian Frisch (@IanFrisch) February 7, 2019

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I Didn’t Plagiarise: Abramson’s Response

In an interview with Fox News, Abramson defended her work by saying “I certainly didn’t plagiarise in my book, and there’s 70 pages of footnotes showing where I got the information.”

She also reiterated her stance in a series of tweets on Twitter.

I take seriously the issues raised and will review the passages in question

— Jill Abramson (@JillAbramson) February 7, 2019

I endeavored to accurately and properly give attribution to the hundreds of sources that were part of my research

— Jill Abramson (@JillAbramson) February 7, 2019

The attacks on my book from some @vicenews reflect their unhappiness with what I consider a balanced portrayal.

— Jill Abramson (@JillAbramson) February 7, 2019

Simon & Schuster, Abramson’s publisher, in an emailed statement to Vox said, through a representative:

“It has been published with an extraordinary degree of transparency, each of the four news organizations covered in the book was given ample time and opportunity to comment on the content, and where appropriate, the author made changes and corrections. If upon further examination changes or attributions are deemed necessary, we stand ready to work with the author in making those revisions.”

Statement by Simon & Schuster

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But Journalists Aren’t Amused

All I'm saying is that if a student at my previous institution had turned in Abramson's book it would've resulted in a report to the dean for academic dishonesty; if she did it again, she'd be a candidate for expulsion https://t.co/scE1c3b7EA

— Anne Helen Petersen (@annehelen) February 7, 2019

Good eye, @mcmoynihan -- writers who steal the work of others must be treated like the thieves they are.https://t.co/j2ZdhGojR6

— John Schindler (@20committee) February 7, 2019

Perhaps if Jill Abramson took notes she'd be more likely to avoid...
*checks notes*
repeated instances of plagiarism...
*checks notes*
in a book titled "Merchants of Truth" https://t.co/4GB5Bdhx5x

— Anthony L. Fisher (@anthonyLfisher) February 6, 2019

To state the obvious, including a footnote does not allow one to lift entire passages. If you want to do that you quote directly and assign attribution in the text. Wouldn't a NYT editor know this? https://t.co/GCGaso7M4f

— Jennifer Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) February 7, 2019

Plagiarism watchdog @mcmoynihan’s latest affirms what many suspected of @Jillabramson ‘s book: That it’s lazy, tendentious, and most ironically, tramples the very notion of journalistic rigor and ethics she writes so sanctimoniously about. https://t.co/cMJqZeDd2H

— Andrew Glazer (@andrewglazer) February 7, 2019

Will Abramson take responsibility? Or will the book go on to become a bestseller? Either way, it has certainly given journalists across the world something to chew on.