Nate Thayer’s post on Monday about how much TheAtlantic.com was willing (or, more accurately, not willing) to pay for a re-written version of his NK News article about basketball in North Korean diplomacy created quite the firestorm. “Several thousand emails, messages, phone calls, 300,000 blog hits,” according to Thayer, and a long, important discussion about the state of freelance journalism.
But the online foment has now turned back onto Thayer—author Jeremy Duns published a blog post on Thursday titled, “Nate Thayer is a plagiarist.” It alleges that Thayer’s NK News story “massively and unambiguously” plagiarized a 2006 article in the San Diego Union-Tribune. Duns was just as certain of his allegations in an interview.
“Plagiarism drives me completely nuts,” he said, noting his role in unmasking Quentin Rowan’s plagiarized spy novel, Assassin of Secrets, in 2011.
“There’s no other explanation” for the similarities between Thayer’s story and Mark Zeigler’s in the U-T nor, Duns said, for the fact that attribution links weren’t added to the story until after he contacted Thayer via Twitter about them.
NK News Editor in Chief Tad Farrell said that Thayer was asked to write a piece about the role of basketball in North Korean diplomacy in the wake of Dennis Rodman’s recent visit there. Thayer came back with a 5,000-plus-word article that was then edited down and posted on the site, Farrell said.
Thayer did not see the article before it was posted. The editing process created “numerous attribution errors,” Farrell said, and Thayer pointed them out after the story was posted. The mistakes were fixed, and this, Farrell said, accounts for why Duns noticed that links to the Union-Tribune piece were added in later.
“It was not a plagiarized piece,” Farrell insisted.
Thayer also maintained that the reporting in his piece, unless attributed elsewhere, was his own.
“I am outraged, of course,” he said via email. “I will defend to the death my reporting and attribution of this piece. Every allegation is answerable.”
Thayer continued:
“This obviously, as you would know as a journalist, is a very angst inducing matter. I want the facts presented fairly and accurately. I didn’t plagiarize anything. To even have to write those words make me angry.
That someone can publish such allegations without going through a quality control and ethical and fact checking editorial process, speaks more to the state of what passes as journalism today than the libelous allegations he has made against me.
UPDATE, 10pm: Mark Zeigler, author of the U-T’s 2006 article, told CJR that he’s “certainly interested and mildly concerned” about Duns’s accusations. Zeigler said Thayer did contact him last week and they talked about Zeigler’s article and about the fact that Thayer was working on another article about basketball in North Korea pegged to Dennis Rodman’s visit.
After Thayer’s piece was published, Zeigler said, he received an email from Farrell that apologized for not linking to Zeigler’s article and said it was an unintentional error and that the links would be restored.
Zeigler’s not completely satisfied with the way the his piece was ultimately attributed in Thayer’s article, however.
“I don’t think just highlighting a few words of type in a different color necessarily qualifies as a proper attribution,” he said, adding that his piece “took a lot of work and a lot of man hours” to report and write. Considering how many of Zeigler’s sources were then used in Thayer’s piece, Zeigler said, he and the U-T deserved more than a passing “documents obtained by the San Diego Union Tribune in 2006.”
Zeigler also pointed out that, since the well of information about North Korea from which a journalist can draw is fairly small, it’s understandable that a reporter writing about the North Koreans’ love of basketball would have little more to go on than his article. And he’s not ready to accuse Thayer of plagiarism: “I have no reason not to respect him as a fellow journalist.”
I learned of questions about Nate Thayer's original story before Jeremy Duns allegations. This was done via Felix Salmon story, a note stating the Nate Thayer piece did not cite and "was deeply indebted to Mark Zeigler’s story on the same subject."
I contacted Nate Thayer about this end note and he tweeted back, "It did cite Zeigler and every of dozens of independent sources personally contacted. You are bordering on libelous"
So its known, Thayer threw out the same libelous jab at Duns. It seem like a reflex defense he employs, almost generic.
I think to be fair, Duns blog post needs some sort independent investigation before a man's reputation is ruined.
Chris Roberts
#1 Posted by Chris Roberts, CJR on Thu 7 Mar 2013 at 06:32 PM
It may not be plagiarism but, reading the two pieces side by side, it is certainly lazy writing, and certainly not reporting - more a mimic of Zeigler's work from seven years prior. Attributions or not, it's a clear sign that Thayer did no heavy-lifting in writing a piece with every identical source - Coyne, Ronzone, Schmiel, Carlin - that Zeigler used. Just plain lazy, let ye be so branded. The low point and the real tell has to be Thayer's use of the identical Santorum quote that Zeigler attributed in his 2006 piece to "a few years ago," with Thayer then noting this year that Santorum made the exact same statement "last year." Even if Santorum repeated, Thayer finds it relevant to reflect the exact same statement from the exact same person pulled out of nowhere. Loser.
#2 Posted by Bot Warble, CJR on Fri 8 Mar 2013 at 01:22 PM
This is worse than plagiarism.
In additoion to plagiarizing, Thayer obviously relied on the original article for his sources, instead of digging up his own. So he's a lazy plagiarizer
Thayer may try to rationalize what he did by claiming he spoke to the interviewees but, come on, he did this merely to cover his tracks. You can see this in the quotes he used.. (Incidentally, has anyone checked to see if he did speak to them?)
Are we supposed to beleve he could find no one else to interview than those folks who were in the original piece?
Thayer should just admit what he did instead of making things worse by accusing his critics of "libel."
#3 Posted by stu, CJR on Fri 8 Mar 2013 at 06:04 PM
Look at it this way, Jeff, maybe Nate Thayer literally hasn't been able
to wrap his head around why a post that took him about 15 minutes to write on an irrelevant blog a few days ago has now gone viral to a few million people, and
morphed into people accusing him of the most egregious of ethical
journalistic errors -- plagiarism. Ouch. There is not a scintilla of truth to the
charge, which if one of these bloggers had bothered to actually call him or
email him and ask him before writing it, would be easily shown to be pure 100%
BS. But that would have made a nonstory into a nonstory --- so they
chose to go with it to meet their deadline, having no interest that it
would permanently smear the reputation of someone who has spent 30 years
pursuing his beloved profession.
At the end, once someone actually does the leg work and asks, it is easily
shown that Thayer has never plagiarized a single word in his entire career.
Unfortunately, that will be too late to salvage his reputation, which has
now been permanently damaged. One hopes they are enjoying their expense
account after so-called work drinks. But you can bet that Nate will make sure
these people will be shown to be wrong. Not that anyone gives a damn.
#4 Posted by danny bloom, CJR on Fri 8 Mar 2013 at 11:47 PM
Duns did contact Thayer (as did NYMag), but his response did not come close to explaining the striking and extensive similarities to other articles. It basically boiled down to "I did too cite Zeigler! Libel!" while ignoring that the citation in question was limited to a single, brief passage. Not a very persuasive counter.
Thayer is wildly talented and has produced incredible journalism in his career—for which he should be lauded—but that doesn't explain what happened in this case. If the plagiarism charge can be "easily shown to be pure 100% BS," might I suggest Thayer take the time to do that soon in a more comprehensive way? As you say, his reputation is at stake.
#5 Posted by Ummm, CJR on Sat 9 Mar 2013 at 01:32 AM
Jeremy Duns: "I didn't interview Thayer's editor, Mark Zeigler or Felix Salmon." Three major sources in the story. Unbelievable, but more so unconscionable when leveling a life altering charge of plagiarism.
#6 Posted by Chris Roberts, CJR on Sat 9 Mar 2013 at 10:45 AM
Many CJR readers, if not most, are journalists and could likely cite similar experiences. I've had reporters for the New York Times, when covering stories I'd broken in a NYC weekly, use nearly the same sources I had with similar quotes. I was sad not to learn more about the issue, given their superior resources; it struck me as lazy reporting, likely because of deadline pressure.
In Thayer and Zeigler's case, though, we have a major newspaper (yes, San Diego counts) vs. an upstart if well respected site (not unlike Tehran Bureau, before it was picked up by Frontline). Unless NK News has big-money backers not mentioned on the site, I think we can call it sloppy editing and policies about attribution, not plagiarism.
Chris Lombardi
http://chrislombardi.me
#7 Posted by Chris Lombardi, CJR on Sat 9 Mar 2013 at 03:14 PM