The Kicker

04:00 PM - March 8, 2013

Nate Thayer: freelance plagiarist?

Sloppy, yes. Plagiarist … doesn’t look like it.

By Sara Morrison

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Wow. Sarah, you seem not to understand what plagiarism is!

'He made it easy for Duns to accuse him of plagiarism because his attribution was sloppy and he represented quotes that were said in other places as if they were said to him (only after, as far as I can tell, first checking in with the people quoted to make sure that was okay with them).'

First of all, his attribution wasn't sloppy - it was practically non-existent. He took several passages and quotes from Zeigler's article and did not cite them, passing them off as his own.

That's the defintion of plagiarism.

The reason I don't need to check in with all these people is because the way he did this. You don't have to wait to hear from Gene Schmiel because it is simply impossible that he recited, word-for-word, entire sentences to Nate Thayer from an article he wrote 13 years ago and did not tell him. Even if he had done that, Thayer should have spotted it because he had read the words in Zeigler's article, where they are quoted and attributed to an American diplomatic magazine.

Look at the Bob Carlin passage and quote in my article. It is nearly word-for-word. The quote is word-for-word. The quote is *now* cited, by a bold hyperlink on the word 'said' directly before it, so I guess if you want to believe the cockamamie story that they both failed to spot it, fine. But even now, even with that bolded word and one other - the only two additional citations currently in the article - it contains a lot of plagiarism. The 68 words before that Bob Carlin quote are still not cited. They're nearly identical to Zeigler's article.

That's plagiarism.

I'm very surprised that an assistant editor at the Columbia Journalism Review can't see it when it's staring her in the face. But then, when you called me within a few minutes of my article going online, you did admit to me that you'd only skim-read it so far. You don't appear to have looked at it closely enough since. Sorry to be brusque, but this really isn't a borderline case at all. It's obvious, blatant plagiarism. You should be able to recognize it!

#1 Posted by Jeremy Duns, CJR on Fri 8 Mar 2013 at 04:20 PM

So I hope everybody can calm down now, especially Nate Thayer, who didn't deserve the hysterical accusations from Jeremy Duns, a fellow who seems to thrive on accusing other writers of mortal sins without getting his facts straight.

#2 Posted by Susan Brownmiller, CJR on Fri 8 Mar 2013 at 04:25 PM

Can you point to a fact I've got wrong, please, Susan?

#3 Posted by Jeemy Duns, CJR on Fri 8 Mar 2013 at 04:28 PM

Zeigler's article in 2006:

'... in October 2000, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright became the first senior-level U.S. government official to visit Kim in North Korea. Their talks lasted two days, and before leaving, Albright presented the 5-foot-3 Kim a gift – an authentic NBA basketball autographed by Michael Jordan. Accompanying Albright on the trip was Bob Carlin, who recently retired after three decades as the chief North Korea analyst for the CIA and State Department...'

Thayer's article, 2013 (and as it stands right now):

'In October 2000, then Secretary of State Madeline Albright traveled to Pyongyang in the highest-level U.S. visit ever to the country. Albright, after two days of talks, presented the 5-foot-3 Kim Jong Il a gift – a NBA basketball autographed by Michael Jordan. Bob Carlin, who was with Albright on the Pyongyang trip and for three decades a top North Korea analyst for the CIA and State Department, said...'

Please explain to me why this passage is not plagiarized. I'm all ears, and waiting to be enlightened by the Columbia Journalism Review.

#4 Posted by Jeremy Duns, CJR on Fri 8 Mar 2013 at 04:38 PM

Wow. So, according to the Columbia Journalism Review, the quoted passage isn't plagiarized? And it was OK to publish the lifted quotes without attribution? If that's what they're teaching aspiring reporters, I think I can see why there are so many scandals in the profession nowadays.

#5 Posted by Ex-Oligarch, CJR on Fri 8 Mar 2013 at 05:29 PM

Hysterical? Really? I think Duns laid things out pretty clearly, specifically in the larger context of Thayer's fist-pounding about pay. Moreover, it sounds like not only isn't Thayer a very good journalist, he's even sloppy at plagiarism.

Sara and Susan, Thayer's water isn't worth carrying. Surprised you're doing so. It's pretty poor form.

#6 Posted by A Person, CJR on Fri 8 Mar 2013 at 05:32 PM

Nate Thayer interviewed Pol Pot. His accuser, Jeremy Duns, tweets. And wrote a blog. With no sources or corroboration. A tag of plagiarism will ruin a writer's life. And based on what, one blog? It's easy to bandwagon, but hang Thayer when hanging is righteous.

#7 Posted by Chris Roberts, CJR on Fri 8 Mar 2013 at 05:41 PM

Is that the same bandwagon you were so happy to jump on a couple of days ago, Chris Roberts?

#8 Posted by Bob Shrunkle, CJR on Fri 8 Mar 2013 at 06:01 PM

I have been consistent throughout. I called out Nate Thayer on the Felix Salmon quote. I explored the possibility that Thayer may have plagiarized, even after Thayer tweeted, "You are bordering on libelous" against me. I can take it, because I wasn't being libelous when quoting Salomon. The bottom line is you don't bury a man without corroboration.

#9 Posted by Chris Roberts, CJR on Fri 8 Mar 2013 at 06:14 PM

If this asst. editor of the esteemed CJR were a professor at the esteemed Columbia School of Journalism and she received Thayer's work in its original form (with no links to the original article) and she then Googled some of it and dscovered its "similarity" to the SDUT piece, what grade would she give him?

He would be expelled for plagiarism. Simple.
Stop attacking ther messenger.

#10 Posted by Stu, CJR on Fri 8 Mar 2013 at 06:21 PM

"Nate Thayer interviewed Pol Pot. His accuser, Jeremy Duns, tweets."

Hey, here's an idea: Instead of trotting out a string of ad hominems, how about debating this matter on the facts?

Again, just an idea.

#11 Posted by James H., CJR on Fri 8 Mar 2013 at 06:21 PM

The above comment by "A Person" sounds like one of those sock puppets that Duns has railed against in the past. Full disclosure: I never heard of Duns before yesterday. That's when I noticed that he was getting some traction in the CJR and elsewhere by attacking an internationally respected journalist, Nate Thayer, who had recently warmed the hearts of thousands of writers by speaking out against the Atlantic's new business model. So I Googled the name "Jeremy Duns" and discovered his specialty: attacking other writers, sometimes scoring and more often not, and managing in all cases to draw attention to himself. An odd career path, surely.

#12 Posted by Susan Brownmiller, CJR on Fri 8 Mar 2013 at 06:27 PM

Is this the same Jeremy Duns? Apparently known for attacking other writers rather than for his own writing? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Duns

#13 Posted by Mavis Riley, CJR on Fri 8 Mar 2013 at 07:00 PM

Susan, please stop. First you were just wrong. Now you're embarrassing yourself. I'm just a human, like yourself, who knows a lazy hack when he sees one. Maybe Thayer didn't begin that way, in his Pol Pot heyday. But he is one now, and clinging to one journalistic career passage for lifelong validation doesn't fly. Otherwise you'd forever be known as a Cornell dropout who parlayed an EA position at a confession magazine into a career as a feminist iconoclast. Which you're not. (Right?) I could care less about who Duns rails against, if he does. In this specific case, he's right and you're wrong. Accept that, own it and move on. You're better than this mess.

#14 Posted by A Person, CJR on Fri 8 Mar 2013 at 07:43 PM

Morrison's piece is remarkable in presenting virtually nothing to support her thesis. Instead, it contorts the findings of her own (fleeting) attempt at research to conclude that Thayer, whose article "represented quotes that were said in other places as if they were said to him," did not plagiarize.

Last I checked, presenting other writers' work as one's own is the very definition of plagiarism.

And Brownmiller, in attacking Duns' penchant for "attacking other writers", illustrates irony quite as naturally as Thayer, the former anti-plagiarism crusader.

#15 Posted by JohnnyDread, CJR on Fri 8 Mar 2013 at 11:46 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

#16 Posted by danny bloom, CJR on Sat 9 Mar 2013 at 12:03 AM

I half-promise to leave this discussion, which has produced a few giggles, and giggles are good. But I need to address "A Person" who writes with the inflections and invective of Jeremy Duns, and who claims point blank "he's right and you're wrong." "A Person," who first-names me, cleverly calls me "a feminist iconoclast"--I'd have preferred the simpler "feminist icon"--and adjures me to "move on." I will move on, after I get serious.

I doubt if there's a writer alive who doesn't fear the P-word. That's why we need to be careful about flinging it about. As a child I read about the unconscious P-ing of the blind child Helen Keller, a true story that has haunted me ever since, whenever I come up with a terrific paragraph or what I think is a remarkably original insight. Where did it come from? Did I unconsciously borrow or lift it? A famous biographer, much in the news recently for better things, defended herself with the excuse that her researcher had given her some material without quotes that she, in turn, had absentmindedly put into her work. I thought that biographer was a goner, but with the passage of time she recovered her reputation. That biographer was/is much loved and super-famous, as Helen Keller was/is much loved and super-famous. You and I, "A Person," are not so loved and not so famous. Our chances of recovering from a heinous charge are much smaller.

Duns's charges are piddling. "A Person" who calls himself "just a human" and adds "lazy hack" to the charges is out of control and dangerous.

#17 Posted by Susan Brownmiller, CJR on Sat 9 Mar 2013 at 01:15 AM

Sad that the great Susan Brownmiller is attacking Jeremy Duns in this way - i.e. implying he would every use a sock puppet (she clearly does not know him!) "I need to address "A Person" who writes with the inflections and invective of Jeremy Duns". Apart from the fact that it would be wholly out of character for him to do anything so underhand (I take him as someone who is truly motivated by an abhorrence of bad journalism/plagiarism) no British person would ever use the formulation "could care less".

#18 Posted by LizzieB, CJR on Sat 9 Mar 2013 at 04:15 AM

With twenty-seven years of newspaper editing under my belt, I think this Jeremy Duns character is almost certainly guilty of libel. I hope his bank balance is as big as his mouth.

#19 Posted by From Afar, CJR on Sat 9 Mar 2013 at 06:02 AM

I am shocked that Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) considers Thayer's work as mere sloppiness. Thayer is far beyond an amateur blogger and should know better. Moreover, his experience with ABC ought to make him hypersensitive to the perils of poor citing/attribution. It seems the future of media is, indeed, at CJR, where integrity in writing is relative to online practices.

#20 Posted by Fidelio, CJR on Sat 9 Mar 2013 at 07:30 AM

Susan, I've already replied to this conversation using my own name, and have no reason to do otherwise. I'm not 'A Person'.

But attacking me is certainly a convenient way of not having to explain why Thayer isn't a plagiarist.

When I asked Thayer why he hadn't cited Zeigler's article, he replied (vehemently) that he had cited everything in the article, including Zeigler's piece. He's a stickler for full attribution, as his article 'The Plague of Online Plagiarism' shows.

But Thayer has now admitted that all the citations weren't there when I asked him about it. From Sara Morrison's previous article on this:

'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.'

What were these mistakes that were supposedly fixed? The addition of three attributions, by hyperlinking the phrases 'revealed his passion', 'mandated' and 'said' to Zeigler's article. The first-mentioned hyperlink has now been removed, leaving just the latter two. To recap:

Thayer was wrong when he told me everything had been attributed.
Just three - and now two - citations were added subsequently.
Thayer and his editor claim these 'numerous attribution errors' were the editor's mistake.
The claim is that Thayer then brought these errors to his editor's attention (after he had told me there were no errors and everything was cited), and that the article was then fixed, and now contains all necessary attributions.

Okay. Let's say that's all the case.

That means that if there are any attribution omissions in the article as it stands right now, they can only be Nate Thayer's fault, as he has now gone over it again, spotted all the citations he put in and that his editor mistakenly missed and, had them added. Right?

So here is why it is not piddling. The article now has two addition citations, but is still missing many more. Sara Morrison has made much of having called some of Thayer's sources (though oddly enough hasn't waited until she called them all before publishing this piece, which completely undermines her own flawed thesis). She has missed that the only sources you need to look at for this are Nate Thayer's article and Mark Zeigler's. And Gene Shcmiel's, cited by Zeigler.

Why? Because the attribution problems are not merely with the quotes. There is material in Thayer's article that is presented as his own words, but which he lifted from Zeigler, and has still not cited. In Thayer's article, right now, are the following three sentences:

'In October 2000, then Secretary of State Madeline Albright traveled to Pyongyang in the highest-level U.S. visit ever to the country. Albright, after two days of talks, presented the 5-foot-3 Kim Jong Il a gift – a NBA basketball autographed by Michael Jordan. Bob Carlin, who was with Albright on the Pyongyang trip and for three decades a top North Korea analyst for the CIA and State Department, said...'

The subsequent quote - 'We were looking for something that was a little more meaningful...' - is attributed to Zeigler, in that he has (now) hyperlinked the word 'said'. But that indicates that the quote is from Zeigler's article. If you read the article, though, you find that Zeigler introduced that quote as follows:

'President Clinton's administration began thawing relations in the late 1990s, and in October 2000, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright became the first senior-level U.S. government official to visit Kim in North Korea.
Their talks lasted two days, and before leaving, Albright presented the 5-foot-3 Kim a gift – an authentic NBA basketball autographed by Michael Jordan.
Accompanying Albright on the trip was Bob Car

#21 Posted by Jeremy Duns, CJR on Sat 9 Mar 2013 at 08:26 AM

"the future of media is here" -
wrong on so many levels...

#22 Posted by patrick graham (@smileoftdecade), CJR on Sat 9 Mar 2013 at 08:28 AM

That was too long! But now rather moot.

I have just spoken to Gene Schmiel.

Nate Thayer did call him, and they spoke. But Schmiel still works part-time for the State Department and so is very relucant to give interviews, because he needs to clear everything he says. So he said a few things to Thayer, but insisted that they stay off the record. To help Thayer out, he said he could refer to what he had written in his 2000 article in American Diplomacy.

Thayer did do that, but look at how he did. He didn't attribute the quotes to Schmiel's 2000 article. Instead, he claimed that the quotes were from his interview with Schmiel!

'Ri Gun “then moved to the TV, turned it on and stared transfixed at the opening jump ball of the NBA basketball between the Chicago Bulls and the Cleveland Cavaliers,” Schmiel recalled in an interview this week. “Ri Gun headed the delegation and talked about an interest in basketball and Michael Jordan…Scotty Pippen this and Michael Jordan that, the triangle defense this, three points shots. They cared more about the NBA than I did”.'

Schmiel didn't say any of that to Thayer ¨this week'. The citation is fraudulent. The citation should be 'Schmiel recalled in a 2000 article for American Diplomacy' with a link.

Thayer didn't get a single on-the-record quote from Gene Schmiel. But his article has several Schmiel quotes. They are frauduilently cited.

Schmiel referred him to his article. He didn't ask him to plagiarize it by pretending he had said those words to Thayer.

I look forward to Sara Morrison's retraction of the claim that I, not she, failed to research this properly. I had no need to call Schmiel when I published, because common sense and logic dictates that people do not say long sentences to journalists that they wrote verbatim 13 year previously.

And I look forward to Nate Thayer's admission that he is a plagiarist, too, of course.

#23 Posted by Jeremy Duns, CJR on Sat 9 Mar 2013 at 09:03 AM

"he represented quotes that were said in other places as if they were said to him... That doesn’t make him a plagiarist."

That's... that's just a really weird pair of statements to put so close to each other.

#24 Posted by Tom Phillips , CJR on Sat 9 Mar 2013 at 09:16 AM

Susan, only an iconoclast would insist that they be referred to as an icon instead. God, am I the only grown-up in the room or what?
(P.S. Sorry for using your first name. I thought it was Susan. Now I know that it's actually Susan.)

#25 Posted by A Person, CJR on Sat 9 Mar 2013 at 09:44 AM

I can add very little to what, to me, seems to be an almost entirely clear cut case made by Duns. If others, due to their prejudices, loyalties, or other motivations, wish to blind themselves to the obvious, then there is little that can be done to convince them of the falsity of their position. (In passing, I note my admiration for the evidently supreme logical and epistemic powers of #16 who claims that "it is easily shown that Thayer has never plagiarized a single word in his entire career." That he would find it "easy" to read a body of millions of words, cross-check tens of thousands of references and interviews, check all other pre-existing published and unpublished related work, and prove a negative must indicate he belongs to a truly higher intelligence than ours. I for one bow to our new overlord.)

However, I feel I must respond to #19’s risible suggestion that Duns “is almost certainly guilty of libel”. It would seem, remarkably, that in his/her "twenty-seven years of newspaper editing" experience the commenter hasn’t taken a single training course on the law of defamation. Obviously, s/he believes Duns's words to be false, for whatever reasons. The defence of justification could not possibly apply on this reading of the facts. However, even on this reading, the defence of qualified privilege would be very arguable. Briefly, this defence arises where the statement complained of was made in the public interest and the maker of a statement has a reasonable belief in its truth and is not motivated by malice. In this regard, Lord Nicholls in Reynolds v Times Newspapers [1999] 4 All ER 609 (http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKHL/1999/45.html ) sets out a nonexhaustive list of 10 factors to be taken into consideration when deciding whether a published article is up to the standard of “responsible journalism” and thus protected by qualified privilege. On most of these factors, I submit, Duns falls on the right side of the line.

I am not a defamation specialist. Even if I were, I could not say for certain that Duns would successfully defend an action brought by Thayer. What is clear, however, is that the idea Duns “is almost certainly guilty of libel” is utterly false. It should be noted, of course, that this is the position as I understand it in English law. The law of defamation in England is notoriously unfavourable for defendants in defamation claims, lacking for example, the strong protection of freedom of speech afforded in the US by the First Amendment. Therefore I suspect that Duns’s position is, if anything, stronger in other jurisdictions.

I condemn in the strongest possible terms the making of vague, threatening statements regarding libel for the ostensible purpose of curtailing debate and chilling speech. That someone apparently working in the newspaper industry should wish to carry on in this manner is particularly galling.

tl;dr: Duns probably not guilty of libel. In any case, don’t threaten libel to chill speech

#26 Posted by David Hopkins (@soobrickay), CJR on Sat 9 Mar 2013 at 09:58 AM

There does seem to be real confusion here about what constitutes plagiarism. Plagiarism is not a matter of intent but of outcome. This is why the judgment is quite easy to make, even if the consequences of this judgment are less so. For instance, as a professor teaching first-year college students, I regularly encounter students plagiarizing in a variety of ways: failing to quote sources properly, inadequately citing sources, &/or passing off other's work as their own. Not all of the students making these "mistakes" have done so with the intent of cutting corners or cheating. Nevertheless, they have all plagiarized.

When it comes to determining the sanction, that's where one considers intent. Was it mere sloppiness or ignorance of conventions? Then, the student might get a failing grade on the assignment &/or be asked to resubmit it. Was it academic or intellectual theft? Then, the student is likely to fail the course & may be penalized in other ways (for instance, at the University of Virginia, where there is a single-sanction Honor Code, a student found guilty of plagiarism would be expelled). Someone who commits plagiarism is not necessarily, or in a meaningful sense, "a plagiarist"--it's not an existential category.

Morrison can judge Thayer's sloppiness to be a function of poor editorial oversight &/or the result of his making an "understandable mistake" in moving from notes to article text, but that doesn't mean it's not also--technically--plagiarism.

#27 Posted by VA prof, CJR on Sat 9 Mar 2013 at 12:56 PM

Worth noting here is the fact that NK News is not the Wall Street Journal: It looks like a kind of mixed news-entertainment North Korea site with pretentions at being "influential":
http://www.nknews.org/about-2/ Perhaps they have advertising income but it's by no means The Atlantic, so make no mistake there.

Does Thayer get more of a pass because he's writing for a shoestrings operation with a sketchy editorial process, possibly doing so for free? Does an outfit like NK News get a pass because it is "entirely voluntarily run" and needs a few hours AFTER initial publication to insert some links when (if we take the editor at his word) they were stripped out during the editorial process and Thayer did not have a chance to give a final approval to the piece before it went live?

If money is the original issue, why didn't Thayer pitch this thing to Grantland, where he might have made $1,000? http://whopays.tumblr.com/ It's baffling.

The diligently twitchy Jeremy Duns has probably advised everyone no fewer than eight times to simply read the pieces side-by-side. In spite of a growing sense of annoyance at the narcissistic novelist and his "iconic" interlocutors, that's still probably a good idea, not least of which because the centrality of the 1990s Chicago Bulls to world peace today can finally be drilled into everyone's big, self-important heads.

#28 Posted by Johnny_lately, CJR on Sat 9 Mar 2013 at 03:15 PM

Puhleeeeeze...any journalist with any experience knows exactly what Thayer did. He cheated.
He stole sources.
He stole words.
He stole sentences.
Why all the debate?
Is "stole" or "plagiarize" too strong a charge? No. He stole his sources and facts and anecdotes from the original news report in the SD paper.
Threaten and deny all he might; he will never convince us otherwise.

#29 Posted by Stu, CJR on Sat 9 Mar 2013 at 03:48 PM

it is, unambiguously, plagiarism. He lifted large passages from previous pieces with inadequate or absent citation.

The only question is whether it was sloppiness or intentional trickery. As VA prof notes above, this question may have implications for the way that we might sanction or think of the person committing the plagiarism, but it does not have any implications for whether the article actually constituted plagiarism or not.

I have never heard of Duns, Thayer or Morrison, so I have about as little skin in this game as it is possible to have. Purely on the basis of the cases laid out by those three, I just fail to see where the ambiguity is.

#30 Posted by Peter, CJR on Sun 10 Mar 2013 at 01:05 AM

Reuters article by Raju Gopalakrishnan, December 30 2011:

'"I would equate Ju with General Leslie Groves, who headed the U.S. Manhattan Project that produced atomic bombs during World War Two," said Larry Niksch, who has tracked North Korea for the non-partisan U.S. Congressional Research Service for 43 years.

"Ju runs the day-to-day programs to develop missiles and probably nuclear weapons."'

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/30/us-korea-north-missilemaker-idUSTRE7BT0AP20111230

Article by Nate Thayer, Asia Times, April 4 2012:

'"I would equate Ju with General Leslie Groves, who headed the US Manhattan Project that produced atomic bombs during World War II," said Larry Niksch, a senior associate with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies and former Asian affairs specialist for 43 years with the non-partisan Congressional Research Service. "Ju runs the day-to-day programs to develop missiles and probably nuclear weapons," he said in an e-mail this week.'

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/ND04Dg01.html

Proof of the chronology (the China Post ran Reuters' story, credited):

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws&q=%22to+develop+missiles+and+probably+nuclear+weapons%22&oq=%22to+develop+missiles+and+probably+nuclear+weapons%22&gs_l=news-cc.3..43j43i400.1379.6706.0.6962.5.4.0.1.0.0.41.127.4.4.0...0.0...1ac.1.i9Y5OvosCRA#q=%22to+develop+missiles+and+probably+nuclear+weapons%22&hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws&source=lnt&tbs=ar:1&sa=X&ei=K5w8UYKJIMSD4gT0yoBw&ved=0CCIQpwUoBQ&fp=1&biw=1400&bih=758&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&cad=b&sei=4r88Uc60J-nV4gSU9ICYCg

#31 Posted by Jeremy Duns, CJR on Sun 10 Mar 2013 at 01:19 PM

I'm so happy journalism is dead, now you clowns can go back to working at The Strand.

#32 Posted by me, CJR on Sun 10 Mar 2013 at 05:13 PM

For those keeping score, Jeremy Duns just mic-dropped the hell out of this whole debate with that last post. It's over. Those previously siding with Thayer can now apologize and ease out of the discussion, gracefully while that window of I-had-no-idea-it-was-that-bad is still open.

Icons can apologize first, since they're the loudest.

... *crickets* ...

#33 Posted by A Person, CJR on Sun 10 Mar 2013 at 10:41 PM

Thanks, but I think I nailed it when I read the passage about the Michael Jordan-signed ball that followed Zeigler's passage nearly word for word through seven pieces of information in the same order, but with no citation at all. Sara seems to think it is impossible to tell plagiarism without talking to sources. But that passage wasn't part of an interview, and was out of quotes.

Zeigler wrote that Madeleine Albright

‘presented the 5-foot-3 Kim a gift – an authentic NBA basketball autographed by Michael Jordan.’

Thayer wrote that she

‘presented the 5-foot-3 Kim Jong Il a gift – a NBA basketball autographed by Michael Jordan.’

It's uncited. So it's plagiarism. It is that simple. No calls need be made for that analysis.

That an editor atthe Columbia Journalism Review cannot see that this is plagiarism is quite shocking.

Anyway, I already knew that Thayer was a plagiarist from reading his piece and Zeigler's closely. But having made some calls, I now know *how* he does it. It's ingenious. And if I had relied on making calls instead of reading closely in the first place, he'd have probably fooled me, too:

http://jeremyduns.blogspot.se/2013/03/how-nate-thayer-plagiarizes.html

#34 Posted by Jeremy Duns, CJR on Mon 11 Mar 2013 at 03:56 AM

Well, will Ms. Morrison and CJR now issue a retraction of their attack on Mr. Duns? If there ever had been any doubt, the additional information that has been posted here makes it clear that they are on the wrong side of the facts. If they really believe it is wrong to unfairly impugn a journalist's professional ethics, then they owe him an apology.

#35 Posted by Ex-Oligarch, CJR on Mon 11 Mar 2013 at 12:24 PM

A word to Jeremy Duns - dude you screwed your own pooch. Thayer's work was checked out and confirmed as having interviewed those people. You on the other had seem to like to attack everybody and somehow others come forward parroting your approach who look convincingly like sock puppets.

Stop it Jeremy. You are only hurting yourself now.

#36 Posted by kindness, CJR on Mon 11 Mar 2013 at 05:24 PM

Hello, 'kindness'.

Yes, Thayer did interview the people he said he did. Well, apart from Bob Carlin. Those quotes weren't cited to Zeigler, but are now.

But what you and Sara and others have missed is that it is not solely about the interviews. Mark Zeigler's article has a bit that reads:

‘President Clinton's administration began thawing relations in the late 1990s, and in October 2000, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright became the first senior-level U.S. government official to visit Kim in North Korea.

Their talks lasted two days, and before leaving, Albright presented the 5-foot-3 Kim a gift – an authentic NBA basketball autographed by Michael Jordan.'

Thayer claims that all the attributions are now in his article, and yet the following is still in it:

‘In October 2000, then Secretary of State Madeline Albright traveled to Pyongyang in the highest-level U.S. visit ever to the country. Albright, after two days of talks, presented the 5-foot-3 Kim Jong Il a gift – a NBA basketball autographed by Michael Jordan.'

That is not cited to Zeigler. It is not Thayer's editor's fault - Thayer says all his citations are now in the article.

It is plagiarism.

You're also missing a fundamental point about the interviews. Yes, he interviewed most of the people, and at length. He got some original information from them, too, which is the idea. And he got some original quotes from them, and cited them properly.

He doesn't get a prize for doing some of it right! It doesn't mean he didn't plagiarize large chunks of the article.

Gene Schmiel told me he spoke to Thayer off the record, so I'm a little mystfied as to how there are so many quotes from him in the piece. Schmiel also told me that Thayer asked him if he could the information from his American Diplomacy article.

But it wouldn't even matter if Schmiel had explicitly said 'Please, Nate, take verbatim chunks from that article I wrote and present them in your article as though I had said them to you.'

Schmiel didn't say that, but it wouldn't matter if he had.

Thayer knew what the source was for those quotes: American Diplomacy. He presented them as said to him to avoid citing the article and to make it look like he had got those quotes. Sexier. More glory for his original research, so it looks.

The same with Larry Nicksch in the other article. He interviewed him, yes. But he used a quote Nicksh gave to Reuters and presented it as said to him. It doesn't matter that Nicksh said he could cite the quote. He cited it incorrectly. He wanted to steal the Reuters quote and make it his own. Some journalists call up people who have ben interviewed by others and try to get them to say something similar. It's a new variation to directly email someone you have interviewed with something they have told another journalist to persuade them to give you permission to pretend they said it to you instead!

And it doesn't matter if they agree. Thayer knew the sources for these quotes. He knew the Niksch quote was told to Reuters. He knew the Schmiel quotes were from a 2000 article Schmiel wrote. He misrepresent both as said to him, to get the credit for them. He omitted the correct sources, and passed off material from elsewhere as originally obtained by him. It's plagiarism and deception.

Thayer knew what he was doing. Here's an excerpt from his article 'The Plague of Online Plagiarism:'

'Being a freelance journalist is tough enough these days, and I am not alone in providing what I do for a living far too often for free these days.

But worse is the alarmingly common and increasing trend in the age of online journalism of having ones work baldly being plagiarized, reprinted without compensation, citation, or attribution to the sourcing by for profit media organizations. Plagiarism is widely defined as “copying or stealing someone else’s words or ideas

#37 Posted by Jeremy Duns, CJR on Mon 11 Mar 2013 at 06:04 PM

Cut off for length. The quote is:

'Being a freelance journalist is tough enough these days, and I am not alone in providing what I do for a living far too often for free these days.

But worse is the alarmingly common and increasing trend in the age of online journalism of having ones work baldly being plagiarized, reprinted without compensation, citation, or attribution to the sourcing by for profit media organizations. Plagiarism is widely defined as “copying or stealing someone else’s words or ideas and claiming or presenting them as if they were your own.”'

http://natethayer.wordpress.com/2012/11/23/the-plague-of-online-plagiarism-a-case-study-of-the-anatomy-of-journalistic-theft-from-my-facebook-page/

Indeed it is. And he presented quotes people said to other journalists or wrote elsewhere as said or emailed to him, and not cited the original source.

It's plagiarism.

Sara has accused me of jumping the gun, but she still hasn't read this carefully. There are still lots of missing citations in the piece, but Thayer claims they are all now there - so that is not his editor's fault.

It seems highly implausible his editor at Asia Times would also have missed the attribution to Reuters. If that were the case, why did Thayer email Niksch to ask him if he could 'cite' it in the first place? No need to do that. Just cite it. i didn't have to call Nate Thayer to quote his article from his article about online plagiarism abovel - I just had to cite it properly. So common sense and logic and general nous tells you that two editors aren't to blame and that Thayer has a habit of sending people he has interviewed quotes they have given others and asks if he can 'cite' those quotes, then cites them as said to him by the subject, thereby making the quotes seem his own and omitting others' research and hiding the original source.

Sara's not a careful reader. You can see it in this passage in the piece above:

'Either Santorum said the same thing twice — and one of those times, he said it even though Kim Jong Il was already dead — or, more likely, Thayer found the quote in this New York Times article from December 2011 and either he got confused or his editor did. Understandable mistake.'

Well, I looked for a source for Santorum saying it last year and could not find any such reference. i did find that New York Times article from December 2011 and considered that possibility. But unlike Sara I realized it was not in any way likely. Because I read it closely. Follow her link to the article. Find the Santorum quote. The phrase 'once said that North Korea posed' is hyperlinked. Click on that. It takes you to Mark Zeigler's article.

Thayer has (now) cited Zeigler's article twice in his article. It needs more, but he's cited it twice. There was already one cursory citation for it when it was published. So Thayer had read Zeigler's article and used other information from it. So here are two options:

1. Thayer got the Santorum quote from Zeigler's 2006 article, which he read and cited.
2. Thayer got the Santorum quote from the New York Times' 2011 article - which cited Zeigler for it.

I did my research and realized it was 1. Sara claims above that 2 is more likely, because she hasn't looked at it properly yet. if it's 1 or 2, it's not cited, but lifted. If it's 2 it's sloppy. If it's 1 it is deception. It's so clearly 1 if you follow the logic.

It also took me five minutes to find Gene Schmiel's number. Not sure I'm the one with the research problem here.

#38 Posted by Jeremy Duns, CJR on Mon 11 Mar 2013 at 06:23 PM

Oh, and 'kindness', I don't use sockpuppets. It would appear that at least some people understand the basic definition of plagiarism, even if the Columbia Journalism Review doesn't.

Something else Sara missed - yes, the Bob Carlin quote is now cited to Zeigler in the article. But either Thayer or his editor chaned the quote, removing the phrase 'or a Buffalo Bill book' but without indicating this with ellipses or any other way. That's a strange thing to do accidentally. In fact, it's a doctored quote. Nate Thayer told me he had read my article very carefully and had gone back and read his and that it is now absolutely as it is meant to be and not a word of it is plagiarized or incorrectly attributed. So either he is a very careless reader and has missed that his editor has somehow taken out part of this quote. Or he took it out.

One is sloppy. The other is deceptive.

A close reading of the article and its original sources reveals a pattern of omitting and misattributing material inside and out of quotes. If you read it closely, you can see many of Thayer's stitches still poking out. For instance,
Bob Carlin is first introduced as 'Robert Carlin, a key U.S. government North Korean negotiator...' and this is soon followed by a quote:

'“We did not handle it as wisely as we could have,” Carlin said. “This was a time when they were really trying to improve relations with the United States. I think they wanted to show the American people that this enmity and hostility was thawing because one of their Koreans was playing amongst the Americans.”'

What is the source for that quote in the article as it stands? There's no citation, so it looks like it was said to Thayer. Thayer didn't interview Bob Carlin - he told me this himself and it is clear from elsewhere in the piece. But Thayer has said that all the attributions have now been fixed. So his editor didn't miss this one out - it was never there. It still isn't there. And it is from Zeigler's piece:

'“We did not handle it as wisely as we could have,” said Carlin, the retired State Department expert on North Korea. “This was a time when they were really trying to improve relations with the United States. I think they wanted to show the American people that this enmity and hostility was thawing because one of their Koreans was playing amongst the Americans.”'

It's verbatim! Thayer has plagiarized here. Just three paras later, Thayer has this:

'Bob Carlin, who was with Albright on the Pyongyang trip and for three decades a top North Korea analyst for the CIA and State Department...'

He told us who Carlin was three paras ago, but now it's like he's introducing him. Why? Because that is how Zeigler introduced him - look at his article and you'll see that he had the Albright visit first, introducing Carlin, and had the 'We did not handle it as wisely...' quote further down. Thayer copied and pasted, moving passages around, so that is why we are given a brief intro to Carlin and then a longer one in his piece: Zeigler did as you normally have in an article, a long intro to a person and then later a brief reminder.

You need to read the two pieces. When you do, and do so *closely*, you'll see I'm right. Thayer plagiarized Zeigler's piece. Massively. It is still missing citations for Zeigler's article right now, for quoted and unquoted material regarding Bob Carlin. He has also deliberately omitted citing Zeigler on the Santorum quote - and given a fraudulent date for it to hide it - as well as doctoring a quote and much else besides.

A first-year journalism student should be able to see this. But you need to do what I did. Not call people. Read the texts. *Properly.*

Sara has done just what she accused me of - she's read it too fast, decided she'd get a better story by showing I had jumped the gun and called some people. It doesn't change the plagiarism in the piece one iota. In fact,

#39 Posted by Jeremy Duns, CJR on Mon 11 Mar 2013 at 07:39 PM

Sara has done just what she accused me of - she's read it too fast, decided she'd get a better story by showing I had jumped the gun and called some people. It doesn't change the plagiarism in the piece one iota. In fact, it makes it worse, because Thater has built a clever little system for fooling people who call his sources. The proof is already in his article, though.

#40 Posted by Jeremy Duns, CJR on Mon 11 Mar 2013 at 07:40 PM

Sorry: CORRECTION. Thayer does have this preceding the Carlin quote: that he had said it 'a few years later'. Not good enough, though. It should be cited to the source, Mark Zeigler's article, at the very least with a hyperlinked phrase, it 'said a in a 2006 interview' with that phrase hyperlinked.

But if you doubt the piece is heavily plagiarized, please do tell me why. Sara hasn't. She hasn't really read the pieces properly yet or she'd know it was plagiarism.

#41 Posted by Jeremy Duns, CJR on Mon 11 Mar 2013 at 07:47 PM

This is beyond silly. Duns has cited example after example to let readers decide for themselves yet we've heard nothing here from Thayer.

Even worse, the CJR seems to have rushed to judgement (against Duns) and run with an incompletely researched piece (above) that reads like no editor even read it over..

WHERE are CJR's editors in this? Is Why does CJR (and by extension, the great Columbia School of Journalism) allow Sara M. to decide this important case without doing her journalistic due diligence?

Based on Dun's reporting/ressearch Thayer has a history of plagiarizing and stealing copy and sources and trying to "cover his tracks." He needs to respond beyond crying "libel." Especially because he has written recently about exactly this sort of online stealing and plagiarism.

#42 Posted by Stu, CJR on Mon 11 Mar 2013 at 07:57 PM

To be fair, Stu, we have heard from Nate Thayer - he has denied plagiarizing a single word to Sara, and to others. He denied it to me on Twitter and then on the phone when I called him. But he insisted our call remain off the record, which made it rather redundant, and anyway did not give a straight answer to my specific questions.

What I think Sara has missed is that it doesn't matter what Thayer or his sources say here. You can prove plagiarism just by looking at how an article attributes - or does not attributes - sources. In Thayer's case he has clearly not attributed a great deal, and the problems are still there. Worse, in some cases he has attributed to the wrong source, claiming they were told to him verbatim when they weren't and he knew the original source to cite. And on top of that he has fabricated information, such as Rick Santorum repeating something verbatim in 2012 that he said several years earlier. Santorum didn't do that, as the record shows if you look into it. And Thayer knew that, because the source he should have cited for it was from 2006. He insists his article is now accurate. And yet a verbatim quote from years ago is in his article as though said last year. it's not just unlikely, as Sara points out, because Kim died in 2011. It actually didn't happen. Have a look around. He didn't say it in 2012.

It's problems like that which mean you don't need to call anyone. I don't need to call Rick Santorum to know he didn't say this in 2011. I don't need to call anyone to see the passage about Albright's gift of a Michael-Jordan-signed basketball was lifted. The fact that happened is public record. The way the passage is written is plagiarized from Mark Zeigler's piece. I don't need to speak to Mark Zeigler to see that, either.

Perhaps we'll get there eventually, when I've pointed out enough of the errors in Sara's analysis. But it's rather frustrating. I could have spotted this in my first job as a sub-editor, for all the same reasons.

#43 Posted by Jeremy Duns, CJR on Mon 11 Mar 2013 at 08:23 PM

Is a sock puppet a plagiarist ?

#44 Posted by Yoshinobu , CJR on Mon 11 Mar 2013 at 09:39 PM

Interesting article about how to cite here, and Nate Thayer responds in the comments:

http://paidcontent.org/2013/03/09/plagiarism-and-the-link-how-the-web-makes-attribution-easier-and-more-complicated/

I also respond, but the site confused me for a moment and the comment appeared above his, instead of below. But I think I've probaböy laid out why this is plagiarism even when he interviewed some of the people he plagiarized in a crisper way there than I have here, where I'm slightly losing my rag with constant claims I'm a sockpuppet, and the fact it's beneath an article suggesting I'm guilty of sloppy research.

#45 Posted by Jeremy Duns, CJR on Mon 11 Mar 2013 at 10:57 PM

I can't help wonder if Jeremy Duns secretly recorded the phone call he had with Nate Thayer. He does have form for this. http://jeremyduns-watch.blogspot.com/2012/11/why-telephone-taping-is-immoral-open.html

#46 Posted by Steve, CJR on Mon 11 Mar 2013 at 11:31 PM

I realize the stakes, here, and am sad for the perpetrators as well as the victims in this case.

However, I wonder if any of this matters as the tatters of what is left of "journalistic ethics" blow away in the wind. I speak of
a) the reporters who make a living massaging press releases into "news"
b) the axe-grinders who cannot be troubled to tell two sides of a story
c) the he-said / she-said purveyors
d) the semi plagiarists who chew another's work something slightly before spitting out as their own.
e) those selling their souls for access.

#47 Posted by Mr. Lynch, CJR on Tue 12 Mar 2013 at 12:14 AM

I've seen veteran editors and well-respected writers make up lengthy quotes, create scenarios and details that were wholly fictitious, and change facts to suit their perceived needs (quite often, the perceived need to make something more compelling, concrete or sexy to get it through a top editor or the EIC). This happens very, very often in magazines. I've seen EICs be the perpetrators in this. All this is heresay, but magazine editors know it occurs.

I've called people on some egregious cases, up and down the food chain, and it's often assuaged as a necessary "massaging" or "firming up" or "reframing" to get the $&@! project thru and done in a pressure-cooked calendar. Sort of like an undiscussed yeoman action that's necessitated by the realities of the day-to-day needs to keep the editorial gears moving.

This makes what I'll call commonplace plagiarism, as defined in these comments, a very easy step. Pasting in a graph from a Reuters article and reparaphrasing the paraprasing, moving sentences around, changing tenses and otherwise obfuscating what you pasted? I would venture that it barely moves the needle on the many veteran's "wrong" meter, given how often I also see this done. Compared to the common sins mentioned far above, they may view as a clean, efficient way to work. And again, these are veteran editors and writers who shape and mentor many people over the decades.

A lot of people who get very strident and self-righteous about plagiarism, in its broadest definitions, would probably be pretty reluctant to inspect their own closets too closely. "The corners I cut wasn't outright stealing or really consequential, as far as common practiices go," I can envision quite a few people saying uncomfortably. "It was a victimless transgression--how many other ways could or should you deliver the info in a nut graph quickly and cleanly, especially for something that's been written on a lot?" I can envision others saying, just as uncomfortably.

At my first job at a medical journal, all the writers and editors--all--followed the same prescribed process for creating articles about info presented at conferences and panels: they lightly cleaned up the exact transcript of a physian's presentation, made a dozen or so statements hard quotes, and then put their byline on it. "If you don't do it this way, you're wasting a lot of time," the EIC told me. She had a respected career in newspapers and had won several journalism awards.

#48 Posted by Ron, CJR on Tue 12 Mar 2013 at 02:11 AM

At the end of the day, who really cares? Only Jeremy Duns, the Dunsites and Nate Thayer. The problem with Duns is the fact that he 'exposed' a few comments left by RJ Ellory on Amazon. Something that was blindingly obvious, by the way, and then went on to 'expose' the Leather carry-on. The latter, I hasten to add, was carried out on a public forum for weeks, and quite frankly, there was nothing left to expose. A few screen grabs, a dodgy phone call to the aggrieved party (who behaved throughout as though he were verging on a nervous breakdown), and then a mention in a UK tabloid or two.

The problem here, in my opinion, is that Duns now feels he has a reputation to live up to: Plagiarist-Buster. The Sock Puppet Slayer. But no one cares. Not really. The gentleman would be advised to spend less time on Twitter and more time writing his manuscripts. There is far more acclaim to be had for a best-selling novel than pointing out some missing attributions from an obscure North Korean blogpaper.

All, in my opinion, of course.

Big wet kiss to all!

#49 Posted by Biggsy, CJR on Tue 12 Mar 2013 at 03:34 AM

Hello Steve and Steven.

I do overtweet, that's true. It tends to be more the more heavily I'm working on a book, though - I've spent most of the last week with proofs. I find I'm able to care about ethics and write books as well.

#50 Posted by Jeremy Duns, CJR on Tue 12 Mar 2013 at 04:06 AM

"Mic-dropped"? "It's over"? Let's recap this matter:

1. There are two articles which, for people who care about such things, merit a careful review.

2. Duns did a relatively extensive textual review at his blog, which he subsequently updated. He then read another unrelated piece by Nate Thayer at the Asia Times, and put up another blog post about it which shed a very small amount of light on his first post.

3. Sara Morrison did her due diligence on the matter and managed to write two good posts which concluded that the case was not so cut-and-dried as Duns would have us believe. In part because she since she reps/writes for an esteemed institution of journalism, understands the craft, did extensive additional research, and Duns was a novelist/person posting on a blog, she's going to get the benefit of the doubt.

4. Throughout this process, Jeremy Duns kept up a running stream of interactive blog comments, phone calls, and tweets addressed to other individuals, the world, and the voices in his head. While this activity has been essential for Duns the restless and interacting human, it has not helped his case, nor has it shed much additional light on the original matter.

/// Yes, Kim Jong Il is 5-foot-3 and was presented with a basketball and was it authentic or inauthentic and what about the dashes between the height and where did Thayer get the information about Kim Jong Il's height because everything is a national secret ///

Nothing is proven on Twitter but Jeremy Duns did his best to destroy Sarah Morrison's enjoyment of -- ultimate irony here -- a free professional basketball game on a Brooklyn Saturday.

As 99% of talking heads, feminist icons, sock puppets, casual readers, authors and journalists of all plagiaristic persuasions can agree, Jeremy Duns is an unusual man with unusual methods, a man of noble self-regard, who clangs the great bell of virtu like Jack Torrence with a croque mallet at the Overlook Hotel, who is capable of formidable bouts of fixation, and who is seemingly genetically incapable of knowing when to shut up. Here's to the man who made the story, who penetrates the story, who -- let's face it -- is the story. Ladies and gentlemen, I pick up the purloined letter, I raise the dropped mic, I give you...Jeremy Duns. "Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah"

#51 Posted by Johnny_Lately, CJR on Tue 12 Mar 2013 at 04:32 PM

‘Johnny_Lately’, you’ve descended into ad hominem attacks for your final four paragraphs, which I’ll ignore. But as the article above claims I’ve been sloppy and acted as I shouldn’t have and you’ve claimed the same, allow me to reply.

Unfortunately, while it should be obvious to any journalist that Nate Thayer’s article was and remains heavily plagiarized, it’s not easy to explain concisely. It also takes time to read the articles to follow the logic of it, and unpicking that in comments riddled with ad hominem attacks, and which cut off after a certain length, is hardly ideal. But I’ll try to answer your questions and claims as clearly as possible so that, hopefully, you and anyone else reading – and perhaps even Sara – will see that this is in fact a very clear-cut case of plagiarism. It’ll be long, but I read yours so please do me courtesy of reading mine: you and Sara have both said I didn’t research this enough. So let *me* recap, and explain my working here.

It’s true that I’ve tweeted and commented a lot on this: guilty as charged, Mr ‘_Lately’! I can’t really win there, though, because if I try to be thorough I'm an obssessive bore and it’s tl:dr, but if I don’t go through it all om detail I haven’t shown my research and am sloppy, and can't really make the case, either. I’m also irritated and frustrated that such a black-and-white case has somehow been painted as though it’s grey, and that I’m being criticized for my research rather than Nate Thayer being called to account for his plagiarism by a respectable journalistic body.

Sara emailed me about my original blogpost and I called her within minutes, internationally, and spent some time trying to explain why I was sure this was plagiarism. But it was tricky to do that on the phone, as it involves a close reading of two long articles, which she hadn't yet done. She had only just skim-read mine. But she struck me as being very smart, so I was sure she’d go away and look at it all like a CJR editor should, and after an hour so of mounting suspicions the penny would drop, as it did with me, and she’d go ‘Oh. Okay. I get it. It can’t be anything other than plagiarism.’

She didn’t, I guess due to a combination of factors: I called her so fast she thought I was a bit of a nut, and as I'd just been immersed in looking at this in detail for my blogpost, I spoke fast about precise details she had no idea of yet, and so was probably quite hard to follow. And yes, I guess I probably have a bit of a manic streak, too.

Experience has also taught me that people are too eager to apologize for plagiarism, and that unless it’s verbatim for thousands of words it is usually written off as a ‘debatable case’, as in fact has happened here. People always shoot the messenger and characterize the plagiarism as mere ‘problematic’. There are ‘grey areas’, it was ‘sloppy’, there were ‘numerous missing attributions’. The latter is the definition of plagiarism, but sounds better. See Sara’s piece above! And you get ‘Should we cite the way we were taught at college?’ pieces, and so on. Lawyers at newspapers and sites also do everything in their power to add ‘perhaps’ and question-marks all over such copy, even if it’s incontrovertible, and nobody ever really reads through all the evidence.

And so on. I indicated some of this to Sara, and I suspect her ears pricked up at the fact I had experience of cases of plagiarism at all. I explained that, too, as best as I could, but here’s a better explanation: I really didn’t go looking for this, and don’t, but due to a combination of my hating plagiarism, being on Twitter as a distraction and following a lot of journalists on there, and an apparent epidemic of plagiarism in the last few years – I keep coming across it. Someone left a comment on an article about Quentin Rowan that mentioned Lenore Hart, and so on. Every time, I hope someone else will do the damn digging. But people love to shoot the m

#52 Posted by Jeremy Duns, CJR on Tue 12 Mar 2013 at 08:57 PM

But people love to shoot the messenger, so I get sucked into having to do this to show I know what I’m talking about. And even then, it’s often fruitless.

Anyway, I suspect Sara sensed from this – as perhaps you do, comment-readers – that I was a troublemaker, and quite possibly prone to slinging false accusations around. I also suspect there was a little of that all too common human trait, arrogance: rather like you, and a few others, I think Sara presumed that because I’m a novelist and she is an editor at the prestigious Columbia Journalism Review with several years of journalistic experience behind her, she was the journalist and I a rather novice source: you can see it in her piece above, where she condescendingly refers to me tweeting and blogging. The medium is not the message (and the layout of the article here isn’t significantly different from the one on my blog anyway). But in fact, as well as writing novels I’ve worked as a professional journalist for nearly 15 years, on staff and freelance, in both mainstream and academic publishing, as a sub-editor, a proof-reader, a commissioning editor, an assistant editor a copy-editor and a reporter, and I’ve been published by, from memory, every British broadsheet, and a lot of other places, too. I’ve spent the last two years writing a non-fiction book combining history with investigative journalism, and the fact that I’m in proofs has probably made me more hyper than I usually am.

In my first blogpost I also wrote that I didn’t have time ‘to do a complete analysis’ of Thayer’s article. I suspect that also triggered a reaction in Sara. Oh, so, you didn’t even do a complete analysis and you’re calling someone a plagiarist! Wow. Okay, she thought (I guess), she’d do some real digging. She’d call some sources, like *actual journalists do*. This guy! No clue. Sure, it seems like it if you look side by side – but do the legwork, kid! Don’t send three tweets and rush out a blog. Pick up the phone. I’m guessing, but I sense some of this in the story above.

But she made a basic mistake. I can be a bit manic. Like many writers working from home, I have been known to overtweet. And I didn’t do a complete analysis of Thayer’s article, which would have involved checking every single sentence to see if he’d lifted it. I didn’t do that. But then neither did Sara. I still haven’t done it, and neither has she. We’re talking at least a full’s day work to do that for a professional editor. What I did was read Thayer’s article and then Zeigler’s, and noted the many obvious similarities between them. Checking some of these further, in a relatively short space of time I found unambiguous proof that several of Thayer’s passages were plagiarized. A comprehensive check of every single word of the piece might show more, and at some stage should be done – but I’d found several chunks of blatant plagiarism and that was enough to publish my article stating so. But I also indicated that if someone looked at it really deeply, there might be even more lifted material.

The mistake Sara made was to make her calls before she’d read the articles properly. She read them, yes, of course. But they’re long. It’s tedious to do, really. Thayer’s especially goes all over the place. So I think Sara looked, but not closely enough. She could see that some of it looked bad, yes, but the proof was in the pudding. She was itching to do her Woodward thing, to call sources. Dry work, sitting look at this. Let’s clear it all up. So she made some calls, and she found that Thayer, unsurprisingly, denied it, strenuously. His editor admitted some attribution errors. But one of Thayer’s sources, Michael Coyne, told her that he had in fact spoken to Thayer, at length, and given him a whole lot of material, too. And yes, sure, his quotes looked quite similar, but then he often said much the same thing to journalists.

At this point, or a point hereabouts, Sara did what she has accused

#53 Posted by Jeremy Duns, CJR on Tue 12 Mar 2013 at 08:59 PM

At this point, or a point hereabouts, Sara did what she has accused me of: she jumped to a conclusion. Her conclusion was that I had got it wrong. That Thayer had probably been sloppy, but that he hadn’t plagiarized anything. Thayer had spoken to Coyne and those quotes were genuine, so the chances were that he had interviewed the others, too, and that their quotes were also genuine.

But she was wrong. I hadn’t called Nate Thayer a plagiarist based on a couple of similarly worded quotes – I’ve interviewed dozens of people, and know very well how often interviewees tell favoured anecdotes, use the same speech patterns and can on rare occasions even come up with a quote that is identical to something they said earlier. But I found too many of these to make coincidence plausible. I found that in some cases quotes were verbatim or near-verbatim for very long stretches, and it wasn’t simply that there was a missing citation but one that made no sense. For example, the Rick Santorum quote. I know a few good tricks for checking this sort of thing. There’s no record of Santorum having repeated himself like that. It was possible he could have said something very similar at a later date, but this was word for word. It’s a shortish quote, true, a soundbite, so it was just about possible that he had said it somewhere I couldn’t find, Thayer had found it, and for some reason had decided not to give it any attribution.

But logic crept in… Thayer’s article had originally included one small, rather buried, citation to Zeigler’s 2006 article, and two more had since been added. And this Santorum quote was in Zeigler’s article, too. So Thayer must have seen that. So he knew one source for that quote in 2006: Zeigler. Why had he not written that Santorum had said it in 2006 and then repeated it? Was it a typo? Didn’t really look like it. Could Thayer have found another source for Santorum saying it later and simply not noticed it was in Ziegler’s article? Possible, yes, but in Zeigler’s article that quote is followed immediately by a para quoting Tony Ronzone, followed by several paras quoting Gene Schmiel from an article on a US diplomatic website. And the Ronzone and Schmiel quotes were almost identical in Thayer’s piece. Some were in fact identical, but said to Thayer years later.

Finally, there was the passage about Madeleine Albright. This is the clincher, as there is no way anyone with any knowledge of journalism can say this is anything but plagiarism. It is absolutely a smoking gun. You’re right that Kim Jong Il’s height isn’t a national secret. Neither is it that Albright gave him a basketball, or indeed a single piece of information in that passage. That isn’t the point. It doesn’t make the least difference if Thayer could have found out all that information from other sources. He didn’t. He lifted it from Zeigler’s piece. It’s a straightforward piece of plagiarism that anyone should be able to see. If he’d found all this out elsewhere, he’d have worded it in a different order, with different pieces of information. They’re practically identical, with all the pieces of information in the same order: He starts with the date, October 2000. Well, you would. That’s logical. He then says Albright was the highest-level visitor. Okay, that follows Zeigler exactly. Then he says the talks went on for two days. So did Zeigler. Detail of Kim’s height. That was what Zeigler had next. The gift was a ball signed by Jordan. Zeigler too. Bob Carlin accompanied her. Still the same info as Zeigler, in the same order. Carlin served three decades as chief analyst for CIA and State. It’s about as blatant as you can get! Seven pieces of information in the same order. Followed by a quote from Bob Carlin – and Thayer attributed *that*, belatedly, with a single hyperlinked word and no other information, to Zeigler’s piece.

I hadn’t mentioned Coyne at all in my article. I couldn’t find any plagiarism there. That didn’t mean i

#54 Posted by Jeremy Duns, CJR on Tue 12 Mar 2013 at 09:00 PM

I hadn’t mentioned Coyne at all in my article. I couldn’t find any plagiarism there. That didn’t mean it didn’t exist, and a closer look might not find it, just that even though Zeigler interviewed him, too, it looked like he also said a lot of different stuff. But Thayer doesn’t get prizes for his original material here. That’s what is meant to be there!

Sara jumped to her false conclusion without even going through all the sources. But she didn’t need to. It was there in the article. There’s no way Thayer could have got the Albright passage from anywhere but Zeigler, who he goes onto cite directly afterwards. But as it stood when I wrote my article, and as it stands now, that passage is passed off as being original text by Thayer. It self-evidently isn’t.

Calling a few of Thayer’s sources told Sara he had done some original research. But simply reading the piece presents unassailable problems, including this one out of quotes – and no source can help with that.

Let’s get to some of what you’ve said:

‘Duns did a relatively extensive textual review at his blog, which he subsequently updated. He then read another unrelated piece by Nate Thayer at the Asia Times, and put up another blog post about it which shed a very small amount of light on his first post.’

Okay. Just saying that doesn’t make it true. Same goes for your unsupported ‘relatively’. Sara suggested in her piece above that the examples of what I called plagiarism in Thayer’s NK News article were probably innocent errors, sloppy perhaps but no more, and that they were in part due to the editor of NK News accidentally missing citations. My second blog post sheds light because the fact that an article Thayer wrote for another publication has the same problem suggests that her interpretation is extremely unlikely. In fact, I know it’s not the case, both from looking at the texts and also from having spoken to Gene Schmiel and Larry Niksch, who confirmed what common sense tells anyone: people don’t repeat long quotes verbatim to different journalists, months and in Schmiel’s case years apart. In both these cases, Nate Thayer knew that some of the quotes he claimed they had told him that week had previously been published. He read Schmiel’s article in American Diplomacy before he contacted Schmiel. As well as interviewing Schmiel off the record, and getting some new information and fresh quotes, Thayer also asked Schmiel if he could ‘cite’ the material in his 2000 article. Niksch read me an email Thayer sent him asking him about the Reuters quotes in a very similar way.

So in both these cases, for two separate publications, Thayer approached interviewees and asked if he could ‘cite’ their pre-existing quotes. Both Schmiel and Niksch told him he could, but neither understood that he didn’t just mean that he would attribute their words to them, but that he would also leave out where they were originally published and instead pretend they had just said the sentences to him. When I explained this, neither man was especially alarmed that Thayer had done that: Niksch was happy his thoughts on North Korean policy were accurate and attributed to him, for example. But neither was either man familiar with Thayer’s articles quoting them, and they aren’t journalists. As even an editor at the Columbia Journalism Review doesn’t understand the basic concept of plagiarism, it seems a little unfair to expect interviewees to. The defence that Thayer got their ‘permission’ to do this is hogwash, I’m afraid – he knew the quotes were previously published, and knew where, so he had no valid reason *at all* not to cite them properly. Instead, he decided to pass them off as quotes he had originally obtained. Passing off material as your own without citing the original source is, quite simply, plagiarism.

‘Sara Morrison did her due diligence on the matter and managed to write two good posts which concluded that the case was not so c

#55 Posted by Jeremy Duns, CJR on Tue 12 Mar 2013 at 09:02 PM

‘Sara Morrison did her due diligence on the matter and managed to write two good posts which concluded that the case was not so cut-and-dried as Duns would have us believe.’

Again, just stating this doesn’t make it true. Sara has made some fundamental errors. In her first piece she wrote that Nate Thayer hadn’t seen his article before NK News published it:

‘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.’

Sara seems to think that Farrell’s errors absolve Thayer of any blame, but she hasn’t really thought this through, despite my trying to get her to on Twitter and emailing her about it. trhe crucial bit is the last part I just quoted: Nate Thayer admits there were inadvertent attribution errors when his article was first published, *but claims they are now all fixed*. According to Thayer, everything in his article as it stands right now is his own reporting, unless it is properly attributed to another source. All that has been added, though, are two hyperlinked words. Here is just some of the material in Thayer’s article that is still not correctly attributed, but which is provably not his own original reporting:

Paras 7 to 12 of the article contain quotes by Gene Schmiel that he had ‘recalled in an interview this week’. Some of them are original, as is some of the research. But most of them are lifted verbatim or near-to-it from Schmiel’s 2000 article in American Diplomacy, which is not cited anywhere. Instead, Thayer has fraudulently claimed Schmiel said some of this to him. Schmiel told me he spoke to Thayer off the record because if he said anything new he’d have to clear it with State.

Thayer: ‘led by a man in the Pyongyang “America department who spoke good English, was said to have an intelligence background, and close ties to the Dear Leader.”’’

This is plagiarized, as it should be attributed to Schmiel’s article published 13 years earlier but Thayer instead passes it off as an original quote obtained by him that week. Schmiel wrote in 2000: ‘an office director-level diplomat in the “America Department” rumored to have “good English, an intelligence background, and close ties to the Dear Leader Kim.”’

Thayer has even changed the quote a little, which is actually worse because it can’t just be a missing citation. The similarities are still too close, as is the chronology, to make it plausible Schmiel said this to him exactly this way 13 years on. That’s moot anyway, as Schmiel spoke to Thayer off the record, so all his quotes should be cited to other sources, or taken out of quotes and attributed to an unnamed source speaking off the record.

Thayer: ‘“After dinner, we went to their hotel room in Washington and [Gun] said ‘Oh My God! It’s eight o’clock! The Chicago Bulls are on TNT! Be quiet, we can talk during the commercials. Stop. No more talking! Michael [Jordan] and the Bulls are on TNT, and I’ve got to see if Scotty [Pippen] has gotten over his latest injury!’”’

This is, again, wrongly attributed to Schmiel ‘this week’, when it’s a fudged version of his 2000 article: ‘The discussions proceeded positively until 10:00 when the climax of the evening arrived, unexpectedly, and for completely unforeseen reasons. Looking at his watch, the director suddenly said, “Stop. No more. Michael [Jordan] and the Bulls are on TNT, and I've got to see if Scotty [Pippen] has gotten over his latest injury!”’

Schmiel is not likely, is he, to have doctored his own quote? It’s clearly a Frankenstein quote. Thayer has asked him about the anecdote in the 2000 article, and got

#56 Posted by Jeremy Duns, CJR on Tue 12 Mar 2013 at 09:03 PM

Schmiel is not likely, is he, to have doctored his own quote? It’s clearly a Frankenstein quote. Thayer has asked him about the anecdote in the 2000 article, and got some new details: the game started two hours later, apparently, and Thayer has discovered the name of this man, Ri Gun. But Schmiel did not recall ‘in an interview this week’ with Nate Thayer the stuff in quotes there. Quotes are what people actually say, not what you think sounds good from what they told you mixed up with what they’ve previously told others or written, as you will. And there’s no way Schmiel said to Thayer 13 years later the verbatim sentence ‘Michael and the Bulls are on TNT, and I've got to see if Scotty has gotten over his latest injury!’ It’s just common sense that it didn’t happen.

Thayer: ‘Ri Gun “then moved to the TV, turned it on and stared transfixed at the opening jump ball of the NBA basketball between the Chicago Bulls and the Cleveland Cavaliers,” Schmiel recalled in an interview this week.’

This is the only cite for all the Schmiel quotes. But once again, this one is in fact all from Schmiel’s 2000 article: ‘He then moved to the TV, turned it on, and stared transfixed at the opening jump ball of the NBA basketball between the Chicago Bulls and the Cleveland Cavaliers.’

Thayer: ‘We spent the rest of our time together that evening debating not high policy, but high quality basketball shooting and such arcana as whether the NBA should permit use of the zone defense. It was clear from our discussions that he had watched the NBA for many years.’

Schmiel, 2000: ‘Since I'm from Cleveland, we spent the rest of our time together that evening debating not high policy, but high quality basketball shooting and such arcana as whether the NBA should permit use of the zone defense. It was clear from our discussions that he had watched the NBA for many years.’

It’s clear from this quote that it is not a missing citation to the 2000 article, because he has added ‘Since I’m from Cleveland’ to the front, presumably because Schmiel said that to him. But he didn’t say the rest, not like this again, word for word. It’s a quote. This is fabrication, here.

The Rick Santorum quote from 2012 needs a source. It’s in fact from Mark Zeigler’s 2006 piece.

The passage about Madeleine Albright’s visit needs to be sourced, and either rephrased or put in quotes: it is nearly a verbatim lift from Zeigler’s article. The plagiarism has also introduced an error: ‘a top’ analyst is similar, but not the same, as being ‘the chief’ analyst.

Carlin’s quote starting ‘We did not handle it as wisely…’ needs a clear attribution to Zeigler.

The article needs a correction and explanation for a missing segment of one Carlin quote that hasn’t been indicated at all (‘or a Buffalo Bill book’) – ellipses would do it. Or just put those words back into the quote.

All of this is basic stuff for a professional editor who has put in the time to look closely at the pieces.

tl:dr: Sara is wrong. Thayer blatantly plagiarized his articles in both NK News and Asia Times, and there's almost certainly more of it in his previous work if anyone bothers to look at it properly. (Alternatively, it's all my fault and sabotage my Wikipedia entry because of this article.)

#57 Posted by Jeremy Duns, CJR on Tue 12 Mar 2013 at 09:05 PM

I didn't know any of the parties prior to tonight, but I am perplexed how an assistant editor at the Columbia Journalism Review could accuse Jeremy Duns of plagiarism given the veritable mountain of facts that he has provided but were never addressed. It is more absurd that there hasn't been a retraction on this page.

I found it embarrassing to read this article; it was utterly disgusting and I loathe the fact that I contributed to the site's view count. Congratulations for posting a blatantly false but sensationalist editorial, I'll be sure to stay away from the CJR in the future on any passing links.

#58 Posted by Perplexed, CJR on Wed 13 Mar 2013 at 01:36 AM

Two short points

a) Jeremy Duns is an asshat.

b) Either most of the indignant people on this comment thread are Jeremy Duns or they have plagiarized his points and language directly from his Twitter feed.

The first point is indisputable. On the second I demand an investigation.

#59 Posted by Homer Hemingway, CJR on Wed 13 Mar 2013 at 05:49 AM

Here's the most concrete take-away I've distilled from reading this article and all these comments:

When you want to post a really long, vitriolic and indignant comment, or maybe dozens of them, you should probably write said comment offline, let it sit overnight, and then come back to it and see if you still think posting it is a good idea.

I've never done this personally but it sounds like a good idea. I'm lucky that I post about two comments a month total, anywhere, so I'd like to hope that any self-righteous idiotic ramblings I may inflict on other people on the Internet have been limited.

Reading these comments has felt a bit like watching the video of Michael Richards having his N-word meltdown. You want to scream "Stop! Are you insane?! Stop talking!!," and maybe you even do. But the self-immolation just goes on. There's no stopping it. You can only watch and hope the person finds the ability to quit before they do more damage. At a certain point it becomes more uncomfortable than entertaining.

I'd better stop watching now.

#60 Posted by Ron, CJR on Wed 13 Mar 2013 at 05:02 PM

"At a certain point it becomes more uncomfortable than entertaining."

I'd find all this a lot more "comfortable" if Thayer would deign to respond to these accusations.

Looks to me like he lifted sources, stole quotes and plagiarized.

What's his response?

He's written on how he detests online plagiarism but doesn't feel the need to respond here?

#61 Posted by stu, CJR on Wed 13 Mar 2013 at 06:33 PM

'Homer Hemingway', I may well be an 'asshat'. I'd rather be one of those than a plagiarist, though. Or an apologist for one.

From Sara's article above:

'He made it easy for Duns to accuse him of plagiarism because his attribution was sloppy and he represented quotes that were said in other places as if they were said to him (only after, as far as I can tell, first checking in with the people quoted to make sure that was okay with them).'

Why would anyone do this? Just cite the original source. Misrepresenting quotes by omitting the original source and pretending that they were said to you is plagiarism. It doesn't matter if the interviewees had said to him he could - he knew the original sources were American Diplomacy and Reuters.

Lifting material from other sources and pretending it was your own research is the *definition* of plagiarism. And that is what Nate Thayer provably did in at least two articles.

#62 Posted by Jeremy Duns, CJR on Thu 14 Mar 2013 at 08:32 AM

'Jeremy Duns', I said the fact that you were an asshat was indisputable. My only regret was not using a capital 'A'.

You trot out your old allegations once again without answering the charges in part b). If the indignant posters above are not also you then they have stolen your ideas and words verbatim from your Twitter feed. Should you not be writing a blog about them? Should you not be hounding them down and throwing them to the dogs without any proper evidence?

It's also rich that you mention "misrepresenting quotes" when you do exactly the same in your post directly above this one. Sara Morrison did not write '(only after, as far as I can tell, first checking in with the people quoted to make sure that was okay with them)' but you chose to include your own tedious opinion within the quote marks.

If I were you I would probably accuse you of deliberately twisting Sara's words but as it is I think it just shows that you are a numbskull.

Cue comment about resorting to ad hominem insults...

#63 Posted by Homer Hemingway, CJR on Thu 14 Mar 2013 at 11:53 AM

'Homer Hemingway', I've already answered accusations earlier in this discussion that I'm writing under any identity other than this one. I'm not. I don't think anyone has said the same thing as me verbatim - some people have just agreed with me. I'd rather people used their real names, you included, but that's hardly up to me.

You've continued your ad hominem attack on me, and in the process revealed that you can't read closely, as the quote I attributed to Sara in brackets is very cxlearly in her piece above if you take 10 seconds to look. But you haven't answered how Nate Thayer is a plagiarist. I wouldn't take you seriously, either, after that goof, but it's revealing tha all you want to do is shoot the messenger rather than look at the plagiarism.

#64 Posted by Jeremy Duns, CJR on Thu 14 Mar 2013 at 12:10 PM

Homer -

As far as I can tell, Jeremy (in the two pieces on his blog) has very clearly demonstrated that Nate Thayer committed plagiarism - and also how he did so - presenting evidence for both allegations.

If a journalist works very hard to get a quote from X, another journalist should not then pretend to have got that quote themselves by dint of asking X "did you say this?". Plagiarism is not - as some people seem to think - blindly copy-pasting chunks of text (although Thayer appears to have done some of that too). It is using the work of others without acknowledging it. Getting good, effective quotes from interviewees requires research, work and skill. It is certainly more a part of being a good journalist than simply being able to type that quote up afterwards.

Thayer could not have written his piece without Zeigler's article. The End. Therefore, he should have acknowledged Zeigler's contribution. To not do so is plagiarism; he is presenting the work done by others as work he has done himself. There can be little real, sensible debate about this. And there has not been.

The issue is obscured by the fact that Thayer has produced very important journalism in the past, and that the point that sparked this off - writers should be paid, etc - is an important one, about which he is correct. And yes, there is a sense in which any plagiarism seems to be "no big deal" in comparison. If that is what you think, then fair enough. But Jeremy is effectively the subject of this article, so is entitled to defend his views in light of it - for at least as long as people disagree with the obvious and insult him in the comments. And plagiarism is a serious accusation. Jeremy is right to set the facts out in detail. The problem is not that he does so, but that he keeps having to.

#65 Posted by stevemosby, CJR on Thu 14 Mar 2013 at 01:25 PM

For a variety of reasons, I probably shouldn’t bother responding to Homer Hemingway, but I will (with a sigh and a reminder to myself to a) ignore trolls and b) check the @AvoidComments Twitter account more often).

As you fail to acknowledge in #59, there are quite a few people on this thread who agree with Jeremy Duns’ assessment of Thayer’s work in this case and whose comments are not “indignant.” Recognizing, however, that interpreting tone is a subjective matter, I’ll entertain the possibility that my comment (#27) could come across this way to someone reading it. So, for the record: I’m neither a sockpuppet for Duns nor am I plagiarizing him; I suspect I’m not alone in that regard. Before this incident, I’d never heard of Jeremy Duns; I’ve also never read his Twitter feed or his blog. In fact, I’ve skipped most of his comments here because, frankly, I don’t have the time and don’t need any more evidence or aggravation. On the latter point, I share Duns’ general frustration on two accounts: 1) that what is a rather clear-cut matter has been made more complicated, including by the above article; and 2) that people like Duns have to expend so much effort and make so much noise pointing out what should be obvious to any objective reader who takes a close look at the articles in question.

Repeating oneself to those who can’t or won’t listen is crazy-making. Arguing with people whose comments include logical fallacies, bold misrepresentations (in the words of Peter/#30, “sloppiness or intentional trickery”? You be the judge), sarcastic provocations, and name-calling is, too.

If I had my way, CJR would close this comment thread and write a follow-up piece addressing the responses by Duns (&, indirectly, others who agree with him). Let that be the end of it unless Thayer weighs in or significant new information is discovered. As one of those people who thinks plagiarism (especially by professional writers who should know better) is kind of a big deal, I believe the issues raised by both this incident and in comments like #47 and #48 warrant further discussion, as they--like the matter of pay--relate to the state of contemporary journalism.

On a related matter mentioned by Duns in #64, I agree that posting under one’s own name is ideal. But as someone who does publish as part of my job, I use pseudonyms in online comments sections to distinguish writing that I consider personal/private/informal from the professional/public/formal writing I do for a living.

#66 Posted by VA prof, CJR on Fri 15 Mar 2013 at 05:26 PM

It seems strange for a commenter to call for a thread to be closed to further comments. I'm troubled by the insistence of the "defense-of-Dunn" comments that Dunn's viewpoint is the only acceptable one. A person can make an accusation, but the examination of that charge and the outcome are determined over time, by more than one person. There is absolutely no requirement for Mr. Thayer (or anyone) to answer a comment thread. Democracy ... due process ... etiquette are part of the social fabric. No single individual gets to make the rules and the judgements.

#67 Posted by Yoshinobu, CJR on Mon 18 Mar 2013 at 03:09 PM

It seems stranger to me, 'Yoshinobu', that this article still hasn't been amended, despite it being riddled with inaccuracies about Nate Thayer's work - and mine. Sara Morrison has also admitted to me on Twitter that Thayer has yet to respond to several questions she has asked him. I guess one sensible question to ask him, which he refused to answer when I did so, and which any sub-editor or fact-checker would think of is the following:

'Mr Thayer, you asked people you interviewed if you could 'cite' previous interviews they had done or articles they had written. They said you could. You then cited those quotes, but claimed they had been said to you, and omitted the previous sources. What was your purpose here? As you knew the earleir sources, why didn't you just cite them?'

The answer to that is why Thayer is a plagiarist.

The CJR editor has refused to even do me the courtesy of replying to my complaint about this article. I can see why. It's tricky to admitt that an article you published accusing another journalist of jumping the gun jumped the gun itself.

But it would be the right thing to do, of course.

#68 Posted by Jeremy Duns, CJR on Mon 25 Mar 2013 at 04:16 PM

Jeremy,

Your last comment has forced me to change my mind completely. You're absolutely right, this matter now calls for more investigation. But Sara Morrison and the CJR aren't having it.

Thus, I have an idea: Why don't you use your mouse to harness all of your brilliant comments on this article, do the same with your illuminating Twitter feed for the month of March, paste them all a giant seething record of your thoughts on this issue, and then publish it on your own website?

I'm sure we could all benefit from noting, from a statistical point of view, how many times you were forced to repeat yourself on certain points (whatever you do, don't spend a lot of time pruning away from your various online writings you will have taken the time to compile -- voluminous repetition is the best way to prove any point), and this itself could be useful data for those of us who are still in denial about a whole range of issues.

Additionally, you could quote "A Person" and other friendly avatars as much as you liked, so long as their work was attributed and a URL was provided to this site. Why not? If they made sense then and can help with the barrage, they certainly belong in your article.

When it comes to cataloguing your own multiple unanswered Tweets to basketball fans like Sara Morrison, make sure to give them (the tweets, but also perhaps the people) individual call numbers, so that we can see which elements of your correspondence she or they have failed to respond to.

I recommend separate call numbers for Tweets, blog/story comments, and of course phone calls and personal interactions, which are also a vital part of this whole pastiche if the whole story is to be known. Also, don't forget to add the time and duration of each interaction, perhaps adding expressive emoticons so that we have a better sense of if they helped you to feel elated or just sad.

This way, when someone says "Sara Morrison did her due diligence," you can say "No, as I've noted previously [see #CJR2DunsIsTheManNotJohnnyLately.C.52-64:) and #DunsTWITTThayerJ'ACCUSE26,666/SaraMorrison/NetsGame#43;)], she did not, and obviously you have missed the point, dear sir."

Once you have a chance to revisit all of this very significant data, I'm sure you'll emerge out of it with a cool head and terse prose that will finally turn the tide, because it will finally allow all of us to get a sense of the scope of your fascinating inquiry. I can't wait to see the call numbers, revisit your awesome tweets, read your new piece, and spread the word to other cunning would-be violators!

The alternative is for you to stick with your current strategy of demanding that Sara Morrison to pull together a new article on the matter because you have clearly mastered her on the present comment thread. Is her obvious defeat not proven by the fact that she has not participated in the thread? God knows if I were in her position, I would be taking the professional opportunity of interacting with you regularly on this matter, and then diligently highlighting and chasing down the various open loops which you have so generously been pointing out. But sooner or later she, as I now have, overwhelmed by the size of the data, will take the inevitable step and hail the colossus. Only you, Jeremy Duns, can hasten that day. Rex tremendae majestatis!

#69 Posted by Johnny_Lately, CJR on Mon 25 Mar 2013 at 06:15 PM

Thanks for the advice, 'Johnny_Lately', but I don't think I need any lessons in terse writing from you.

#70 Posted by Jeremy Duns, CJR on Mon 25 Mar 2013 at 09:06 PM

Duns, such pith! It's very becoming.

Incidentally it's impossible to find your grand moment on Twitter (referenced in one or more of the poop piles above), due to the fact that on March 25 alone you managed to generate a big splattery mess of 200+ tweets that seemed to primarily be about elephants, Boris Johnson, and pop music in the 1980s. Where is the monomania that I, your fan, have come to know and expect? How do you expect your loyal would-be myrmidons to fight their way backward through such an unyielding placenta of non-assertion, and find your grand moment on Twitter (i.e., series call number #DunsTwiTTThayerJACCUSE666) where all was revealed and you cracked the case into the light of day?

Are you really satisfied with "[Sara Morrison] admitted on Twitter that Thayer hadn't answered all of her questions"? No citation, Mr. Duns? You're making assertions without documentation; how am I supposed to decide for myself? If your assertions and conversations on Twitter are relevant to your verdict or argument (as surely they are, or you wouldn't refer to them so often), then they need to be considered, don't they?

If you could drop in the URLs for the top 5 tweets pertaining to this case or, far better, do a new post on your blog which synthesizes and reshapes your various findings (as I suggested above), we'd be further along here. Otherwise you can stand on top of this comment thread and demand that we survey your work, as if it were actually finished.

Such an admirable mind, yet so resistant to discipline, and to structure!

#71 Posted by Johnny_Lately, CJR on Tue 26 Mar 2013 at 12:35 PM

Not sure which grand moment you mean - but it's pretty easy to read my reasoning on my blog. Sara's comment to me is here:

https://twitter.com/SaraMorrison/status/312979724714520576

You can rant on that I tweet about pop music or repeat myself in comments as much as you like - if you look at the articles, and bother to read what I've written, you'll see Thayer is a plagiarist. Ad hominem attacks on me aren't a convincing defence of this. But if you want to join Sara and the CJR in being a plagiarism aplogist, go for it.

#72 Posted by Jeremy Duns, CJR on Tue 26 Mar 2013 at 12:54 PM

I'm not apologizing for anything, I was just asking for a citation, which you've provided. Indeed, I had not realized that Thayer promised, and has not delivered, a more detailed response. That was very helpful. Sorry for being crass. Thank you, Jeremy!

#73 Posted by Johnny_Lately, CJR on Tue 26 Mar 2013 at 01:28 PM

You're welcome. But I think someone who chooses to post long ad hominem attacks on me and ignore Thayer's obvious plagiarism is a plagiarism apologist. You don't need to read my tweets or me losing the will to live in this conversation - just read the examples I gave on my blog carefully and I think you'll see it's indisputable, and that I had no need to call up anyone (some of the plagiarism is *out of quotes*). But yes, I do despair of Sara or the CJR bothering to do the sort of dilgent research they've accused me of neglecting.

#74 Posted by Jeremy Duns, CJR on Tue 26 Mar 2013 at 01:45 PM

Jeremy darling, you do go on..... and on .... and on......

#75 Posted by Johanna, CJR on Wed 27 Mar 2013 at 08:51 AM

Any comment on the substance of this, ie Thayer's plagiarism, Johanna? Ah, thought not.

#76 Posted by Jeremy Duns, CJR on Wed 27 Mar 2013 at 12:29 PM

Well, Mr Thayer?
It's been about three weeks and you have yet to answer either J Duns or the CJR about these very, very credible plagiarism and quote-source stealing charges. You now remind me, I am sad to say, of Greg Mortenson who disappeared after being accused of fabrication, etc.
Instead of attacking your accusers, just explain why we should not brand you a plagiarist. You either stole copy or you didn't. And all signs point to you having stolen.

#77 Posted by Jules, CJR on Thu 28 Mar 2013 at 01:01 AM

Buzz, buzz....

#78 Posted by Hamlet, CJR on Thu 28 Mar 2013 at 11:09 AM

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