Former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson is being accused by Vice News Tonight correspondent Michael Moynihan of plagrizing the passages in her new book that are about Vice.
Moynihan says that passages in Abramson’s book, Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and The Fight For Facts, about Vice resemble passages she has taken from other sources.
Here’s the Vice Newser’s tweet thread from yesterday:
So…Jill Abramson’s book has finally hit bookstore shelves. A few weeks ago, reading a galley copy, I noticed an egregious error about my colleague @adrs. She tweeted it out, a shit storm followed, Abramson corrected the mistake.
— Michael C Moynihan (@mcmoynihan) February 6, 2019
*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
The following examples from the final book—not the galley—are only from the Vice chapters (I didn’t check the others). So let’s begin…Here is Abramson on Gavin McInnes (whom she interviewed) and the Ryerson Review of Journalism https://t.co/hx0XcyZ89k pic.twitter.com/qroN59gyVk
— Michael C Moynihan (@mcmoynihan) February 6, 2019
This passage, on former Vice News editor Jason Mojica, is lifted from a 2010 Time Out magazine piece, with small modifications: https://t.co/csNoONZQhX pic.twitter.com/aiQzwKEStl
— Michael C Moynihan (@mcmoynihan) February 6, 2019
This paragraph can be sourced to two places: a *masters thesis* and a 2013 New Yorker piece by Lizzie Widdicombe https://t.co/ZWX5RgKxlahttps://t.co/Ux6gdDO9Qg pic.twitter.com/tSIKyRoKDP
— Michael C Moynihan (@mcmoynihan) February 6, 2019
This example is from one source–the New Yorker again–though the two sentences are separated by a page.https://t.co/Ux6gdDO9Qg pic.twitter.com/m3dnsQaOmv
— Michael C Moynihan (@mcmoynihan) February 6, 2019
Here Abramson–in a treatise on journalistic ethics–copies a passage from…the Columbia Journalism Reviewhttps://t.co/mZZlA4odqw pic.twitter.com/gZVxQ1dc3Z
— Michael C Moynihan (@mcmoynihan) February 6, 2019
There’s lesser stuff too; still problematic. At various points in Merchants of Truth, rather than toil in the archives, reading old issues of the magazine or watching old Vice videos, Abramson liberally borrows from those who have: https://t.co/Ux6gdDO9Qg pic.twitter.com/mEvufhFJ3J
— Michael C Moynihan (@mcmoynihan) February 6, 2019
There’s plenty more–enormous factual errors, other cribbed passages, single or unsourced claims–but this should give a sense.
— Michael C Moynihan (@mcmoynihan) February 6, 2019
The book ends with a final wag of the finger, reminding me that my colleagues apparently don’t possess “the expertise to compete on the biggest news stories.” If Abramson is the arbiter of ethics & expertise, I think we’re doing just fine.
— Michael C Moynihan (@mcmoynihan) February 6, 2019
Abramson was already scheduled to appear on Fox News’ 7 p.m. show The Story with Martha MacCallum to discuss the book, the final version of which was released this past Tuesday, and other media issues. Moynihan’s thread was posted during the 6 p.m. hour, leaving MacCallum time to address the situation.
“I certainly didn’t plagiarize in my book and there are 70 pages of footnotes showing where I got the information,” Abramson told MacCallum not long after tweets emerged. “Abramson said that a number of people from Vice have taken issue with what she has written about the company in her book.”
MacCallum read several examples to Abramson, who later said, “I’d have to take a look at it.”