Journalism’s Dirty Little Secret

By Alcuin Papa

PLAGIARISM is one of journalism’s unforgivable sins.

In the US, where standards of journalism are strictly observed, cases of plagiarism have been reported even in respectable publications like the New York Times and USA Today. American publications are quick to publicly admit and apologize for acts of plagiarism.

In the Philippines, how-ever, acts of plagiarism hardly become public knowledge. Plagiarism is Philippine jour-nalism’s dirty little secret. As a veteran editor said, “Marami pa ’yan.”

The editor was referring to the complaint of Mary Gusta-fon, editor of the defunct online magazine Knot Magazine, against columnist and The Manila Times editor Manny Marinay.

In a letter sent through the e-mail to the Times editors last Nov. 4, Gustafon accused Marinay of plagiarizing one of her pieces on gay issues.

“It’s been brought to my attention that your columnist Manny B. Marinay seems to have published a column on June 1, 2004, containing senten-ces and paragraphs completely lifted from an article I wrote for Knot Magazine published on Jan. 14, 2004. It is clear that since my article was published six months before you published Marinay’s, that I’m not the one who did the copying. I just wanted to bring this to your attention,” wrote Gustafson.

She said, he said
In her column, Gustafson wrote: “The lack of sexual tension likewise encourages other friendships to flourish—straight women/straight women, hetero men/hetero men, hetero men/lesbians. And yet, the relationship between straight women and gay men gets special names like ‘fag hag,’ ‘fruit flies,’ or ‘queen bees,’ and wield enough novelty to be captured in shows like ‘Will and Grace’ and ‘Sex and the City.’ Hetero women wear their fag hag label with pride—being a fag hag is somehow a signifier of being hip or progressive.”

Marinay’s column said: “There is no sexual competition or tension in the friendship between a fag hag and a gay man. And yet, the relationship gets special names like ‘fag hag,’ ‘fruit flies,’ or ‘queen bees,’ and wield enough novelty to be captured in shows like Sex and the City. Hetero women wear their fag hag label with pride, being a fag hag is somehow a signifier of being hip or progressive.”

Other portions of Marinay’s column were cited to show their similarity with Gustafson’s.

In his letter to the Times editors, Marinay admitted that he had read Gustafon’s piece but denied copying it. He blamed his Opinion editor, Fil Elefante, for not attributing the quoted portions to Gustafon.

“I had read her story and I liked it very much, that’s why I quoted several passages of her article to jazz up my column,” said Marinay, who resigned recently from the Times. “I will not dispute Ms. Gustafson’s contention that the passages she cited in her e-mail which I used in my column that tackled gay identity—are indeed hers. In my column, however, those passages should have been enclosed in quotation marks,” he added.

Marinay claimed he cited Gustafson in a footnote to his column. But “that too, was omitted. What I’m guilty of really is that I did not write an erratum.”

Not the first time?
Elefante disputed Marinay’s claims in a scathing response that was sent to Times editors on Nov. 13. He said Marinay’s raw copy did not have any reference to Gustafson’s work.

“For the record, I never removed any attribution to Ms Gustafson from Mr. Marinay’s column. As far as I can remember, there was no attribution to Ms Gustafson in Mr. Marinay’s co-lumn whatsoever,” Elefante said.

Elefante’s response noted other instances where Marinay supposedly copied from the work of other writers. “He blatantly made it appear that the ideas appearing in his column were his own. There was no hint whatsoever that the ideas were not his,” he said.

According to Elefante, Marinay’s opinion column published on June 22, 2005 (From the Newsroom, “Venomous Ratzi rattles gay flock”) was “sourced almost entirely from the work of Tamara Turner of the Seattle Radical Women. The original article (Don’t Blame Gays for Catholic Church Scandal) first appeared on June 19, 2002.”

The June 29, 2005, column of Marinay (From the Newsroom, “What ‘special rights’?”) actually came from an article by Mel Dahl entitled, “No ‘special rights’ for anybody” which first appeared on March 10, 1994 in the Boston gay newspaper Bay Windows.

Editor Rene Bas said the Times had formed a committee to investigate the case even after Marinay had resigned. He declined to reveal the results of the investigation, saying it was an “internal matter.”

Bas said Gustafson had “expressed regret” over bringing the issue up with Times editors. But Gustafson later said she only did so because she learned from Bas that Marinay was reportedly taken to the hospital.

‘Deceived’
“When he (Bas) told me that Manny was ill and had to be hospitalized, it made me feel as if I had caused the illness. But when I learned from… Fil Elefante that he was never in the hospital, that made me feel pretty angry. I never expressed that to Mr. Bas, and I don’t think I’ve talked to him since I learned that. I feel differently now, knowing I was deceived,” Gustafson told this writer.

Marinay refused to comment on the case.

In an interview, Gustafson said she has no plans of taking legal action. All she wanted was for the Times editors to recognize and respond to her complaint.

“I pushed them (Times editors) to respond to my complaint, which took some time but they did. All I wanted was for them (the editors and other writers there) to know that this was happening. I know that plagiarists will plagiarize again,” she said.

Gustafon said Bas had promised to send her a copy of the results of the investigation. As of last December, she has not received anything from the Times, not even an apology from the editors or Marinay himself.

“Mr. Elefante feels that there needs to be a clear public apology from the paper, printed in the paper. That would be nice, and the smart thing to do. I would be satisfied just to receive a personal one, as would the other journalists he plagiarized,” she said.

Question of credibility
Carlos Conde, secretary-general of the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) and a former Times man, said the Times  should issue an apology or explanation to the public. “Because of the culture prevalent in our newsrooms and the industry as a whole, editors have a tendency to sweep these things under the rug. The mentality of Philippine media is still one of an ‘old boys’ club.’ ’Yung kakulangan natin, atin-atin na lang. That kind of thinking is still there. But this has to change,” he said.

The issue should not have died when Marinay resigned from the Times, Conde said. “They (Times editors) should have reviewed his previous columns, as in the case of the New York Times with Jayson Blair, to see if there was some sort of a pattern.”

Cracking down on these cases, Conde explained, is a way for the local press to regain credibility. Elefante agreed, saying news desks should take plagiarism seriously.

“In this case, a foreign writer is the complainant with the person accused getting away without any action taken, or without as much as an apology or an explanation. The credibility of the Philippine journalist before the rest of the world is at stake here,” he said.

Alcuin Papa is a reporter for the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

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