Former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson just released her new book, and hoo boy it’s getting a lot of heat. The book, called Merchants of Truth: Inside the News Revolution, attempts to detail how news media has changed over the last decade. One topic she focused a great deal on was Vice Media. A few weeks ago, after galleys of the book were given to certain members of the press, people who work at Vice, whom Abramson interviewed, claimed the author made large factual errors.
Abramson never responded to the criticisms head on, beyond tweeting that the copies of the book sent out were uncorrected and then quietly making changes to the final version. Now the book is officially out and another Vice journalist made some more explosive claims. Vice News Tonight correspondent Michael Moynihan tweeted a series of examples that seems to show Abramson cribbing other writers’ pieces without giving them credit. A few examples:
The following examples from the final book—not the galley—are only from the Vice chapters (I didn’t check the others). So let’s begin…Here is Abramson on Gavin McInnes (whom she interviewed) and the Ryerson Review of Journalism https://t.co/hx0XcyZ89k pic.twitter.com/qroN59gyVk
— Michael C Moynihan (@mcmoynihan) February 6, 2019
This paragraph can be sourced to two places: a *masters thesis* and a 2013 New Yorker piece by Lizzie Widdicombe https://t.co/ZWX5RgKxlahttps://t.co/Ux6gdDO9Qg pic.twitter.com/tSIKyRoKDP
— Michael C Moynihan (@mcmoynihan) February 6, 2019
Last night, Abramson made an appearance on Fox News and defended herself. “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,” she said, according to the Washington Post.
The Post notes that the book does have endnotes with references to cited materials. Yet, there “is no indication in the main text of the book showing which passages require attribution.”
Simon & Schuster reportedly issued a statement last night defending the book as well, adding that it will look into the allegations and make revisions if need be.
Statement from Simon & Schuster on Jill Abramson’s book: “If upon further examination changes or attributions are deemed necessary we stand ready to work with the author in making those revisions.” pic.twitter.com/uHnERiyA43
— Max Tani (@maxwelltani) February 7, 2019
We’ll see if these examples are enough to sway the publisher.