Jill’s Delicious Copypasta Recipe
Two cups: photographic memory, One teaspoon: plagiarism.
1.👻
In 2015, I was working on a book about Vice Media. Gavin McInnes told me that Jill Abramson was “doing a big chapter on Vice”. This was all before he milkshake-ducked his friends by founding a western chauvinist fraternity called the Proud Boys.
I reached out to Jill Abramson at her Harvard email to tell her I was working on a book about Vice and ask if she could help fact-check something about David Carr. Shane, in 2014 (Carr was still alive), had told a group of journalism students that he and David were “always friends” and they “hang out”. I wondered if she had any insight into this unlikely bromance.
Her response was “Happy to help. Tell me a bit more about yr book and you”.
I responded and ended the email with a joke “I’m an open book if you promise not to steal all my research. [cheeky face]”, I followed up two weeks later and again two months later… totally ghosted by the former editor of the New York Times. Dang.
My self-publishing plans were to create a fun-house mirror of Vice Magazine, where all the articles were *about* Vice Media, Shane Smith and their corporate shenanigans. Since then, I cannibalized my book into the 25+ articles found on this blog.
2.🦆
Three weeks ago, two Vice staff began tweeting about Abramson’s book. As it turns out, someone at Vice obtained an uncorrected galley proofs that say “Please do not quote for publication without checking the finished book”. That copy made its way into the hands of Michael Moynehan. A Simon & Schuster statement, released later stated that Vice and others were “given ample time and opportunity to comment”. Giving several weeks to the people you’re criticizing, especially writers without published code of ethics, might have been a bad idea.
I once made the mistake of giving an opponent ample time to respond to a draft article. In 2018, I wrote an extremely critical article about Gavin McInnes. Since our 2015 chat, I couldn’t help but notice he was becoming less Fox News and more Breitbart. I gave him as much time as he needed to respond (he requested three weeks) and he used the latter portion to coordinate, the harassment of me and my family in an effort to make my life “a living hell”.
3.🍔(Updated: Feb 8 2019)
Michael Moynihan talked about Jill Abramson’s book on two Fifth Column podcasts. On the episode recorded Jan 17th said he “joined together with a bunch of former colleagues and current colleagues to fact-check some things” in the galley proof of Merchants of Truth. He says that he tweeted out some errors and but that he’s got “a lot more of that coming”. He describes having sent a photo of of a page to Arielle Duhaime-Ross, a Vice News Tonight correspondent, who is inaccurately described as transgender.
On Jan 12th, Arielle tweeted without context or knowledge of a disclaimer saying “Please do not quote for publication without checking the finished book”. Her damning twitter thread detailed the falsehoods made about her gender, experience, hairstyle and boot color. Jill’s indirect and vague response made two days later, suggested that the changes had or would be made. The only change made on publication was that Arielle was properly labeled as gender non-conforming.
In the Jan 22nd podcast Michael reveals that he’s writing something but he doesn’t know where it will be published. He promises to reveal the irony if the title: Merchants of Truth. He claims that Jill used inaccurate and biased source material. A co-host asks if she identified the sources of her research and Moynihan shouts “OH MY GOD NO!” adding its “the worst paste job I’ve ever seen in my life”. Pressed for details he repeats the same story about Arielle and calls the Vice chapters “all wrong,” “insane” refers to Abramson’s Simon & Schuster associates as “dumb”.
In both podcasts, Michael never says the word “plagiarism”. A ‘paste job’ in book writing, according to Wikipedia, “implies little creativity, no original research and no new insights. It is often assumed that these books are produced by journalists rather than experts in the subject.”
“It is the worst paste job I’ve ever seen in my life” — Michael Moynihan on Merchants of Truth. Jan 22nd 2019.
When a co-host asks about Moynihan’s Jan 14th tweet about ‘Haiti funding Vice’. Michael explains how early funding was from a Haitian community in Montreal, not Haiti itself. Moynihan begins to mimic a Haitian/west-African accent “I want, to fund, papers in Canada” co-host joins in with “about, cunnilingus” Moynihan adds “Vice, Guide, to, Giving, Head. Great stuff.”
4.👆👇👈👉
Robert Wright, the mindful monk of media, tweeted “Usually in these situations there are 3 choices: (1) say you’re a plagiarist; (2) blame a research assistant (awkward for journalists, as it means you didn’t write the whole book); (3) say you got mixed up between what you wrote & what you or an assistant copy-pasted.”
Jill’s assistant? A Vice writer.
Depending on who you ask, John Stillman, was an employee or a contributor for Vice (to puff-up their size, Vice will sometimes conflate contributors with employees). In 2015, John published two articles in the now shuttered Vice Sports. His website says he “assisted Jill Abramson with the research, writing and editing” of her book. The book’s acknowledgements credit him with drafting parts of the book and providing “a sharp eye’ editing the manuscript. I could not reach him for comment.
5.😳
Jill was confronted live on Fox News with printouts of Moynihan’s tweets. Moynihan, a former Fox News regular, tweeted about an hour before her interview began.
I believe Micheals tweetstorm alleging plagiarism (which ironically plagiarized part of a thread I had made 30 hours earlier and tagged Michael in) was timed for maximum damage to distract from the lucid and devastating arguments Jill made against Vice’s corrupt editorial model.
Jill explains in the book, there is no editorial wall separating Vice and its marketing team. She explains how this editorial corruption spawned Tonic, Fightland, Creators Project and others. The advertorial hellscape is obscured by a thin fog of good reporting. Namely the Vice on HBO documentary series produced at an operational loss.
6.🤢
Plagiarism is serious. But is it truly plagiarism or just the work of a hack? National Review critic argued the latter calling her “a gum thief, not a Ferrari thief”. An easy thing to say when you’re not a convenience store owner / the actual victim of theft.
As the victim of Jill’s bubbleguma kleptomania, I would appreciate a ‘works consulted’ or just a ‘thanks’.
What bothers me more than theft is that Jill framed Vice as some high-valued boogeyman, not a fraud scheme. Shane Smith lied and stole ad dollars to build his house of cards.
I’m irritated that Jill didn’t explore settlement allegations against Vice’s founder. Instead, Shane is described as a reformed man because two young producers told Jill he doesn’t leer at young women in the stairwell and that he usually looks away (really). Maybe we can reform every #MeToo asshole by giving them a “content company” and a $23 million dollar mansion.
7.🤮
Vomit.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DANIEL VOSHART is an occasional cinematographer, writer and forensic consultant. He works in Architecture and Virtual Reality. Find him on Twitter.
ABOUT NOT VICE
not vice is a critical blog about Vice Media. The contents of this blog could morph back into a book someday.
