VICE is Out to Get Jill Abramson
How VICE strategized a take-down of Merchants of Truth
The truths contained in Merchants of Truth were devastating to Vice’s business model so Vice planned and executed a multi-pronged smear campaign. It began several months ago when Jill Abramson met with Alex Detrick, Vice’s Chief Communications Officer, to review manuscript pages and get feedback. Seemingly unhappy with Vice’s portrayal, Alex* approached BuzzFeed’s PR flack to see if they wanted to join in a campaign to shred the book. BuzzFeed declined.
(*Alex approached Buzzfeed according to people briefed on the conversation. NOTE: Alex was reached via LinkedIn for comment: no response. BuzzFeed CCO was reached via phone and email for comment: no response. Jill isn’t sure who called who but she told an audience “someone at BuzzFeed told me about five weeks before my book was published that someone from Vice had called them.”)
Vice only provided verbal feedback, deliberately avoiding writing. When Jill sent galleys to multiple people at the company, Alex was no longer CCO but remained as an adviser. By the time Vice provided feedback, Jill had her ISBN and publication date. She stopped production and made the changes within ISBN’s limits. By contrast, BuzzFeed gave Jill near-complete access to anything she wanted.
A few weeks before the book’s release date, Michael Moynihan got his hands on a galley and “joined together with a bunch of former colleagues and current colleagues” to pick through book with a fine tooth comb. He banked most his findings and, on the second day of Jill’s book release he tweeted instances of plagiarism and sloppy citations. The book, which two days earlier was deemed “a masterwork” by the Financial Times, melted into a plagiarism apology tour.
Moynihan saw his twitter mentions explode and spent the night getting blackout drunk.
So You’ve Been Professionally Shamed
Jill Abramson called me last week because I had emailed to tell her about pick-pocketing, citation issues and plagiarism in her book. I mentioned subtle references to my work — things I was confident she’s seen — because a few years earlier I had sent her links to them when I heard she was doing a big chapter on Vice.
We had emailed back in 2015 but didn’t communicate again until after she published her book.
The morning the book was released: I live tweeted my reading of the Vice chapters. Within my thread of highlighting errors, bad sourcing and plagiarism, I tagged Micheal Moynihan. I was initially surprised to see something I pointed out go viral 30 hours later.
Michael’s tweets were slick. Claims of plagiarism were toned up and any mention of missed citations was toned down. A masterwork of shaming.
I asked Moynihan three questions:
- Did he withhold knowledge of plagiarism for weeks? (If yes, why?)
- Did he collaborate with other Vice staff writers in finding examples?
- Did he (or helpers) poach the best example from me?
One of Michael’s podcast listeners informed me that he had talked about Jill a few weeks before the book was released. As soon as I found the audio, I updated the thread. It only half-answered my first question (withhold knowledge of plagiarism?) because Moynihan never actually said the word “plagiarism” just “paste job” which is an insult but normal for journalists writing books.
Moynihan didn’t take well to my accusation that he had poached my tweet (which only received 1 like) because the following week he brought it up on his podcast. He did little to clarify my questions.
(CONFUSING SIDE NOTE: Moynihan neither affirmed, denied, or clarified any of my questions on his podcast. Instead he went on a strange rant about how I must be “some mentally ill person.” A strange claim to make since he is not a medical doctor and the show he works for is funded by Bell Media who is trying to combat stigma surrounding mental health.)
- Did Michael collaborate with other writers? Yes.
- Did Michael withhold knowledge of plagiarism for weeks? Unclear, but his spurious allegations against me suggests yes.
On CNN, Brian Stelter raised Jill’s concerns saying “she clearly feels that you at Vice and your colleagues at Vice are out to get her book” Moynihan begins chuckling and responds with “I don’t even know what to say to that.”
Moynihan says that when he got the book he started seeing “very similar passages,” adding that the plagiarism remains regardless if his motivations were good or bad.
So You’re a Hypocrite
Moynihan has a knack for spotting plagiarists. He once joked that could make a living of it. What is different this time (besides defending Dear Leader) is Michael withheld knowledge of plagiarism from the author. When he wrote about Roberto Saviano, Dominiquee Sandbrooke, Jane Goodall and most famously Jonah Leher he reach out to the person he’s accusing for comment. Part of the harm-reduction process of a professional journalist — and ethical foundation that Vice doesn’t have.
Moynihan briefly became the most famous investigative journalist when his story on Jonah Leher shook the publishing world. Jonah had sent Michael on a wild goose chase trying to find fictitious Bob Dylan quotes. Leher’s grand act of deception ultimately led to both his books being pulled from shelves.
But Jill Abramson isn’t Jonah Leher.
Redemption for Jill?
Helen Keller, Martin Luther King and The Beach Boys are also plagiarists — I know this because I plagiarized it from a list of famous plagiarists.
How does Jill stack up? How did it happen?
In my call with Jill I asked if these mistakes came about because of a shared document with an assistant, but she insisted on simply owning the mistake. In an interview published in Rolling Stone, she said she lost footnotes while going from first draft to typed manuscript to galley, and that in proofreading, years later, elements that were fact-heavy didn’t jump out at her as being like, “Wow, this isn’t mine.”
Assuming she isn’t pulling another Leher, it seems reasonable that there could be a dozen errors in the 220 Vice citations. It seems closer in scale to the allegations her friend and former co-author Jane Mayer faced.
When Jane Mayer was about to publish Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, she was made aware of a plagiarism claim that was soon to be published. Mayer mobilized quickly by contacting the writers she supposedly swiped and got public statements. Jane told PBS “If I hadn’t been able to reach those authors fast enough, it could have really tarnished my reputation. Maybe really hurt me professionally. In retrospect it really was quite scary.”
Plagiarism According to the Victims
Jill Abramson made mistakes in a book with 834 citations. She doesn’t call herself a plagiarist but has promised to fix her mistakes.
We could listen all day to Vice employees airing their grievances on behalf of the people getting plagiarized… but what do the authors of said plagiarism think?
Ian Frisch was not out to get Jill Abramson when his tweets went viral. Ian explained to me he had just seen Moynihan’s tweets, and quickly decided to check a book preview. He saw that Jill had rephrased some of his work and used quotes from an interview he conducted back in 2014.
Ian’s tweets, alleged that Jill had plagiarized him at least seven times in her new book. His thread also mentioned that she lifted the reporting from his personal website which had been offline for a year — or so he thought.
After an hour his tweets going viral, someone tweeted Jill had properly cited him in the end-notes. Ian, to his credit, immediately responded then appended a response to the thread but let readers know he still thought Jill’s citations were still inadequate.
What about Ian’s personal website getting plundered? It was a perfect storm of confusion. Years ago, Ian uploaded a “flattened” PDFs to Issuu, so writers of his magazine could pull clippings. He intentionally scrubbed them of SEO properties and text selections so that they wouldn’t be found by search engines. I explained to Ian how I found his PDFs through basic search terms, he seemed genuinely confused having made a deliberate effort not to be found and I speculated that maybe they were indexed without his knowledge. Sure enough, I found a blog post on Issuu stating that it had updated its search and text recognition system in 2013, a year after Ian began uploading PDFs.
Ian hopes the book is amended but told me has not been contacted by Jill or member of her team.
Mathew Ingram, writing for Columbia Journalism Review, was also plagiarized and the irony was lost on no one. Jill, in a book about journalism ethics had used material from a journalism watchdog. Yikes. Matthew, put his thoughts into another article for CJR ‘I was plagiarized by Jill Abramson’. In an email to me, Mathew reiterated what he had posted: “I don’t feel like something important was stolen but I do believe it was plagiarism, and I don’t think it’s something one would expect from someone of Abramson’s caliber.”
Jake Malloy was one of two of the most egregious examples of plagiarism in Jill’s Book. In an on-record interview published in Rolling Stone Jill apologized for using his material. Jake appreciated the apology but made it clear how upset he was that Jill insisted that she lifted “facts” not “original ideas” because it minimized the work that he and other journalists put into getting those facts.
Ryan Bigge’s Master’s thesis is referenced twice but only cited once, and he seemed pretty nonchalant about it.
Jesse Brown interviewed several people from the early days of Vice for a media criticism podcast. Short quotes from the guests were lifted without credit. Jill had credited something else from the site Canadaland but didn’t cite the podcast as the source of the quotes. When I told him Abramson agreed to make the changes he seemed content at first but upon further consideration would also like an apology.
UPDATE Feb 20 2019: Jill phoned Jesse to apologize. He accepted her apology.
A Vice employee said Jill “cribbed” Penelope Green but the passage in questions cites her plainly and clearly. Asked if she felt cribbed: “Good heavens, not at all!”
Nicolle Weeks told the Ryerson Review of Journalism that she was “pretty perplexed” to see her work in Jill’s book. “If you’re a well-known journalist and you’re plagiarizing — you should probably be out of the job.”
Shane Smith describing his family as “dirt poor” came from a Joe Rogan podcast which lacked a citation. It is a mystery what Joe thinks about this.
Daniel Voshart (me) Subtle similarities in structure as well as the use of an obscure tweet that only I had previously written about which I don’t consider plagiarism.
Out of the Frying Pan
Moynihan claims the book is still clotted with errors but these errors were all at least reviewed and not flagged by the company for whom he works. Which is odd because in March of last year, Jill Abramson, made her first of several requests for fact-checking sessions which Vice. After some broken dates, Jill met Alex Detrick. Vice was given plenty of time to scrutinize the three Vice chapters and dispute any factual inaccuracies.
Jill said the mistakes raised during fact-checking sessions were not the mistakes pointed out later.
One big error which Vice did not mention was the misgendering of Arielle Duhaime-Ross, a Vice News Tonight correspondent. Jill had spotted the error herself, prior to January 12th, when Moynihan sent Arielle a picture from the galley. The picture lacked context of the galley’s disclaimer that said to “check the finished book,” her tweet about being labeled transgender instead of gender non-conforming went viral.
Moynihan has offered the list of errors, but said that nobody took him up on the offer. I took him up on the offer.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DANIEL VOSHART is, according to Michael Moynihan, a mentally ill psychopath. When he’s not biting people he’s working in forensic video consultation, Virtual Reality and Architecture.
ABOUT NOT VICE
not vice is a mix of shit-posting and high-effort blogs about Vice. You might find a missing citation or two.
