Jill Abramson says she will correct sourcing errors in new book
The former executive editor of the New York Times has acknowledged making some sourcing errors in her book Merchants of Truth and says she will correct them.
In an email on Thursday to the Associated Press, Jill Abramson wrote that some page numbers in the sourcing notes needed to be fixed and that some sources “should have been cited as quotations in the text”.
A Twitter thread posted on Wednesday by the Vice correspondent Michael C Moynihan listed several examples of passages in Abramson’s book that closely resembled the work of others.
Abramson has defended herself by saying that her book includes extensive endnotes, including web links to sources. It is widely believed that an outside source should be credited in the body of the work if there is a close similarity.
Abramson and her publisher are promising to investigate.
Moynihan’s Twitter thread listed several examples of passages in the book that closely resemble material in the New Yorker, Time Out and other publications. Released this week and praised by Walter Isaacson and Gay Talese among others, Merchants of Truth is a critique of the news business focused on two long-running newspapers, the Times and the Washington Post, along with Vice and fellow digital company BuzzFeed.
“I take seriously the issues raised and will review the passages in question,” Abramson tweeted on Wednesday night. “I endeavored to accurately and properly give attribution to the hundreds of sources that were part of my research.”
She has previously been criticized for alleged factual errors, with reporters at Vice and PBS among those faulting her. On Wednesday, she responded that some criticisms arose from Vice’s unhappiness with Merchants of Truth and its portrait of hypocrisy and sexism. Abramson tweeted that her book offered “a balanced portrayal”.
In a separate statement, Simon & Schuster wrote that Abramson’s book had 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.”
Appearing on Wednesday night on Fox News, Abramson disputed the allegations, 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.” Writers are generally expected to credit their sources directly in the body of the text if the material is similar.
For her book, Abramson was assisted by John Stillman, whom she credits with helping her with research, reporting and writing. Stillman, a freelance journalist who has written for Gothamist and the Awl among others, declined comment when reached by telephone on Wednesday night.
Abramson, who is a political columnist for the Guardian, wrote for the Times and the Wall Street Jour
nal among others before becoming the Times’ first female executive editor in 2011, one of journalism’s most prestigious and influential positions. She was fired three years later after frequently clashing with fellow staff members, and currently teaches creative writing at Harvard University.
Her previous works include Strange Justice, a book about the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas that was cowritten by Jane Mayer.