The New York Times is lying about my plagiarism story and I have the receipts to prove it:
1. The Times claims that I only argued that Kamala Harris plagiarized "five sections" involving "about 500 words." But this isn't true. In my story, I wrote that Stefan Weber argued there are "more than a dozen" instances of "'vicious plagiarism.'" This past Saturday, I provided the Times not only with my written analysis, which argues that there are "more than a dozen," but with Weber's full dossier, which included 18 allegations of varying severity. So, the Times deliberately withheld this crucial contextual information from its readers and from the supposed plagiarism expert, who, based on this limited information, called it "not serious." They could have easily confirmed the "more than a dozen" point, but instead, lied by omission.
2. The Times claims that "none of the passages in question took the ideas or thoughts of another writer." This is preposterous. Harris not only copied multiple paragraphs of other people's work verbatim, but she often lifted those ideas directly and at face value. In one case, she came to the wrong conclusion because she copied Wikipedia—i.e., she stole a bad idea, copied the language verbatim, and got the point wrong. This is the Full Monty of plagiarism. The Times's claim doesn't hold up at all; it's just a way of downplaying the transgression of Kamala Harris, as they tried to do initially with Harvard president Claudine Gay. Their claim is not supported by the evidence:
3. The Times provides one example of the plagiarism from my story, which suggests that it was a minor copy-and-paste of two short sentences:
But this is supremely misleading. The violation was not two sentences, but, rather, five sentences. Here is the actual extent of this plagiarism instance, which is much more severe than the Times suggests. She copied-and-pasted two paragraphs and simply added the word "additional":
4. The Times suggests that noticing Kamala Harris's plagiarism is somehow "racist," even though the paper has covered plagiarism by many other political figures, including conservative minorities, such as former Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke, without suggesting that doing so was "racist." This is just a way of laundering in a smear to complement the absurd headline that my reporting on plagiarism by a presidential candidate is "seiz[ing] on" a transgression that is "not serious"—in other words, framing me as the villain of the story, rather than the plagiarism by a presidential candidate.
My rule of working with journalists is simple: If you treat me fairly, I treat you fairly. After publication of the Times piece, I called the reporter and editor at the Times to ask politely for a correction. The editor, Mary Suh, had nothing but excuses. And so, we're going to fight this one out. They should issue a correction, but, even if they do not, I will correct the record in public.
1. The Times claims that I only argued that Kamala Harris plagiarized "five sections" involving "about 500 words." But this isn't true. In my story, I wrote that Stefan Weber argued there are "more than a dozen" instances of "'vicious plagiarism.'" This past Saturday, I provided the Times not only with my written analysis, which argues that there are "more than a dozen," but with Weber's full dossier, which included 18 allegations of varying severity. So, the Times deliberately withheld this crucial contextual information from its readers and from the supposed plagiarism expert, who, based on this limited information, called it "not serious." They could have easily confirmed the "more than a dozen" point, but instead, lied by omission.
2. The Times claims that "none of the passages in question took the ideas or thoughts of another writer." This is preposterous. Harris not only copied multiple paragraphs of other people's work verbatim, but she often lifted those ideas directly and at face value. In one case, she came to the wrong conclusion because she copied Wikipedia—i.e., she stole a bad idea, copied the language verbatim, and got the point wrong. This is the Full Monty of plagiarism. The Times's claim doesn't hold up at all; it's just a way of downplaying the transgression of Kamala Harris, as they tried to do initially with Harvard president Claudine Gay. Their claim is not supported by the evidence:
3. The Times provides one example of the plagiarism from my story, which suggests that it was a minor copy-and-paste of two short sentences:
But this is supremely misleading. The violation was not two sentences, but, rather, five sentences. Here is the actual extent of this plagiarism instance, which is much more severe than the Times suggests. She copied-and-pasted two paragraphs and simply added the word "additional":
4. The Times suggests that noticing Kamala Harris's plagiarism is somehow "racist," even though the paper has covered plagiarism by many other political figures, including conservative minorities, such as former Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke, without suggesting that doing so was "racist." This is just a way of laundering in a smear to complement the absurd headline that my reporting on plagiarism by a presidential candidate is "seiz[ing] on" a transgression that is "not serious"—in other words, framing me as the villain of the story, rather than the plagiarism by a presidential candidate.
My rule of working with journalists is simple: If you treat me fairly, I treat you fairly. After publication of the Times piece, I called the reporter and editor at the Times to ask politely for a correction. The editor, Mary Suh, had nothing but excuses. And so, we're going to fight this one out. They should issue a correction, but, even if they do not, I will correct the record in public.
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