MSNBC Host Who Went After Twitter Files Journalist Busted For Plagiarism
MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan had Twitter Files journalist Matt Taibbi on his show last week. The two men sparred over Taibbi’s coverage of the Twitter Files, which allege that the United States government used its power to censor the speech of Americans on the social media site in the name of combating “misinformation.”
The interview got very heated. Hasan essentially accused Taibbi of lying to Congress in his testimony. Taibbi denied Hasan’s allegations and criticized the media’s coverage of the Russiagate scandal against former President Donald Trump. Hasan for his part denied any role in the coverage of Russiagate, claiming that he wasn’t there at the time.
Journalist Lee Fang, who was last on the staff of the left-wing Intercept website before he went independent, is now throwing some more gasoline on this fire. He is accusing Hasan of plagiarism.
From Fox News:
MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan is accused of plagiarizing large portions of a past column he wrote that argued in favor of parents spanking their children.
Investigative reporter Lee Fang published a report on his Substack Tuesday accusing the “Mehdi Hasan Show” host of “passing off others’ reporting as his own,” pointing to several unattributed sentences from a 2000 Independent column he authored titled “No Harm In Smacking,” that reads almost verbatim to a U.S. News and World Report article headlined “When to Spank,” published two years earlier.
Apart from a few filler words, Hasan’s language was nearly identical to that used by U.S. News and World Report co-authors Lynn Rosellini and Anna Mulrine, who in 1998, made the case that “Antispanking crusaders relied on inconclusive studies to make sweeping overgeneralizations about spanking’s dangers.”
In another example cited by Fang, Hasan lifted nearly an entire paragraph from the outlet and even used a direct quote cited in the U.S. News and World Report article without any kind of attribution.
If you want to read the actual examples that Fang is citing in his explosive allegations, you can read them on his Substack.
Plagiarism is the worst thing a writer can be accused of. It is usually a fireable offense at most publications. One of the jobs of an editor is to try and ensure that what is published is actually an original idea of the writer and not shamelessly stolen from someone else without attribution.
Note that these are not a bunch of right-wing guys that are fighting over this. As we already pointed out, Fang used to work at the left-wing Intercept website before going independent. Taibbi is also a left-wing guy who used to be at Rollingstone before going independent. Fang and Taibbi may be lefties but they are committed to actually speaking truth to power while Hasan serves as a water carrier for those in power.
It is ironic that Hasan tried to attack the integrity of Taibbi while he is the one who may have passed off someone else’s ideas as his own. Hasan is a fraud, pure and simple. In other words, he’s perfect for the corporate media.
