Plagiarizing Independent Journalists Is Part of Mainstream Media’s Business
Photo by Ajay Suresh from New York, NY, USA
Marisa Kabas is an independent journalist who has been one of the essential reporters of the Trump 2.0 era on her website The Handbasket. Just a week into Trump’s term, Kabas was the first to report on a memo from the Office of Management and Budget titled “Temporary Pause of Agency Grant, Loan, and Other Financial Assistance Programs,” which was a preview of the destruction we have seen take place across the government in the months since. In April she reported on a State Department cable detailing how the US “relocate[d]” an Iraqi refugee to Rwanda under a chilling new agreement between the Trump administration and the Rwandan government, but if you only read CBS or the New York Times, you’d only just now be hearing about this report without ever reading Kabas’ name.
Nearly two weeks after Kabas’ report, CBS filed their own “report” on the deal between the Trump administration and Rwanda, and they wrote this sentence that only someone without a brain in their head, or someone fully aware that they were plagiarizing the original source, could write: “The Rwanda arrangements were first reported by the Washington Post, which also cited work by an independent journalist who had uncovered the recent deportation from the U.S. of an Iraqi national to Rwanda.” Sounds like the Washington Post wasn’t the first to report it then!
The Washington Post wrote in their original writeup that “Ameen’s presence in Rwanda was first reported by independent journalist Marisa Kabas,” but they added no new information that Kabas had not already reported and stuck this sentence 19 paragraphs down in their story that basically amounted to asking people to comment on Kabas’ reporting. CNN also wrote their version of this story and never acknowledged that Kabas was first to report it. CBS News very clearly went out of their way to not credit the original source, and they made a claim about WaPo that WaPo didn’t even make. After everyone pointed out that CBS lied to their readers, they updated their story to make it slightly less shitty while still lying to their readers, writing “the Rwanda arrangements were first reported by the Washington Post, which also cited work by independent journalist Marisa Kabas.”
Not to be outdone in the plagiarism Olympics, the New York Times repeated this saga this morning, lying to their readers by writing “the discussions between Rwanda and the United States, first reported by The Washington Post last week, coincide with a U.S. effort to mediate a peace deal in the war between Rwanda and neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo.” Whoever wrote this and the CBS News story either clearly never read the WaPo article citing Kabas, or they did, and they consciously decided that lying about independent journalists is more important to them than telling the truth. After another uproar, the New York Times updated their story to say the discussions “were first reported by The Handbasket,” but in classic New York Times fashion, they did not include a correction after updating their false story.
Plagiarism is shockingly common in mainstream media, especially at the New York Times. In 2019 Vice wrote a whole article just about the New York Times taking other people’s reporting, making it their own and then not linking to the original report, and even that extensive article wasn’t uncovering a new dynamic. In 2003, Macarena Hernandez wrote about Juanita Anguiano, the mother of a missing soldier from Los Fresnos, Texas in the San Antonio Express-News and that same article found its way to the front page of the New York Times eight days later under Jayson Blair’s byline who had interned with Hernandez at the NYT at the same time. Express-News editor Robert Rivard said, “he stole her story,” and after writing to the Times asking them to look into it, NYT national editor Jim Roberts began calling sources from Blair’s pieces, and executive editor of the NYT Howell Raines said, “in every case…there was an apparent falsification.” As much as Blair should own his plagiarism, this is why editors exist and the fact that his editors did not uncover this until it was brought to their boss’s attention provides a telling window into how the NYT operates. Stenography supersedes the basic tenets of journalism far too often in mainstream media.
There is no other way to describe this alarmingly common practice in mainstream media than plagiarism. Someone else did the work, and now mainstream outlets like the New York Times copy their work, put their name at the top of the story, and then never credit the original source. If a freshman in college did once what the New York Times does on a regular basis they may be expelled. This happens far more often than these outlets want you to think given how much these places have branded themselves as the sole purveyors of The Truth™.
A favorite true thing of mine to say when people describe the Washington Post Roy Moore scoop is that “actually the news was broken by Breitbart :)”