Jill Abramson commits plagiarism
So apparently Jill Abramson committed plagiarism for her book Merchants of Truth. On twitter a thread was started where Vice Correspondent Micheal M. posted a good amount of paragraphs that are very similar to material in other publications such as The New Yorker, Time Out and several others.
Jill Abramson is a former New York Times executive editor and recently released her new book. But with the allegations being made about her possibly using others materials without crediting them has put a bit of a damper on the release. Abramson as well as her publishers have promised to investigate the allegations. Merchants of Truth is a critique on the world of News reporting and mainly focusses on the two well-known newspapers The Times and Washington Post, as well as Vice and Buzzfeed.
Jill of course had to take to twitter to voice her opinion as well “I take seriously the issues raised and will review the passages in question. I endeavored to accurately and properly give attribution to the hundreds of sources that were part of my research.”
Jill has been accused of stating false facts before, but the ones who accused her were the ones she wrote about like Vice and PBS. Simon & Schuster released a statement about the book praising it saying “Merchant of Truth has given an extraordinary degree of transparency toward its subjects; each of the four news organizations covered in the book was given ample time and opportunity to comment on the content, and where appropriate the author made changes and corrections. If upon further examination changes or attributions are deemed necessary we stand ready to work with the author in making those revisions.”
Jill also went on Fox News where she denied the allegations of plagiarism saying: “All I can tell you is I certainly didn’t plagiarize in my book and there’s 70 pages of footnotes showing where I got the information.”
John Stillman assisted Jill in writing her book and she credits him with helping her research for the book. Stillman is a freelance journalist who refused to give a statement. Jill Abramson wrote for The Times and the Wall Street Journal and several others before she became the first female executive director in 2011. She was fired 3 years later due to her frequent clashes with fellow staff members, and she is currently teaching creative writing at Harvard University. The pride of a writer should be the ability to create new words. Perhaps she had writers block for some parts.