Balkanalysis.com

On Nov. 15, 2005, United Press International (UPI) printed a devious, half-hearted apology to Balkanalysis.com, in the form of a re-written original story with an inconspicuous addendum. This unfortunate decision raises serious concerns about the news giant’s journalistic integrity, arrogance and damage-control-at-all-costs instinct.

In concluding the above-linked article on testimony given in late January 2005 by FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds for the Turkish newspaper Vatan, UPI stated:

“the above story first appeared in UPI’s Intelligence Watch feature on February 4, 2005. It drew extensively on text from a story by Chris Deliso on the balkanalysis.com website, but failed to give attribution to that source. Since this has now been brought to our notice we want to acknowledge Mr. Deliso and balkanalysis.com as the source of the story and apologize for our earlier oversight.”

This reliance on euphemisms, such as “failed to give attribution” and “earlier oversight,” is not just pathetic. It is also a lie.What UPI did was not simply “misuse” an original story from another news body; they did a crude cut-and-copy job that clearly amounted to crass plagiarism, in which whole chunks of text were re-appropriated from a Balkanalysis.com story that had appeared a day earlier, on February 3, 2005.

However, UPI refused to comment all throughout a lengthy, three-month email correspondence on the plagiarism charge. And the fact that they did not provide links to either story shows that they were arrogantly ensuring that no one would be able to discover the real dimensions of their content theft.

The Facts- Judge for Yourself

Since we here at Balkanalysis.com believe strongly in always providing proper attribution to our sources, no matter how obscure – and especially, hyperlinks wherever possible – we thought we would allow readers the chance to make up their own minds: so here are the links to the original texts. (Note that we have kept offline copies in the case they try to do something foolish like removing or modifying their original text).

“Sibel Edmonds: FBI’s Compromised Security Damages Turkey’s Security, Too”

(Balkanalysis.com; February 3, 2005, 8:05 EST)

Word count: 535

Links to other sources: 5

“UPI Intelligence Watch”

(John C.K. Daly, UPI Intelligence Correspondent, UPI; February 4, 2005)

Word count: 314

Links to other sources: 0

A quick comparison of both texts indicates that in 5 places, entire passages of the former text have been cut-and-pasted into the body of the latter. Other sentences, while not directly stolen, are clearly directly modeled on the structure of the original Balkanalysis.com piece.

Apparently for UPI, one of the alleged leaders in the field of world media, this does not constitute plagiarism. It was, you see, just an “oversight.”

However, the University of California-Davis’ “Avoiding Plagiarism” fact sheet would seem to disagree:

“if you repeat another’s exact words, you MUST use quotation marks and cite the source.”

Chronology of Events

The decision to hush up the illegal and unethical re-appropriation of Balkanalysis.com material was reached after long discussion between UPI’s highest editorial staff, over a three-month period, after which it was apparently decided that they could get away with the “oversight” claim, being a media Goliath vs. a journalistic David. Of course, this is just conjecture, but we believe that readers who have read the above-linked stories and compared them with the following timeline of correspondence will come to the same conclusion.

August 10, 2005: After a routine search brings up the two articles in question, Balkanalysis.com Director Christopher Deliso emails the UPI general staff and asks them to confirm that their article does not in fact amount to plagiarism; threatens lawsuit.

August 10, 2005: UPI Editor-in-Chief Michael Marshall quickly responds: “thank you for bringing this matter to our notice. Be assured that we take the charge of plagiarism very seriously and will look into the matter thoroughly. This may take a few days as the writer concerned is on vacation this week. As soon as we have asked all the necessary questions we will get back to you with a fuller response.”

August 10, 2005: Balkanalysis.com Director Christopher Deliso response to Mr. Marshall, thanking him for his reply and saying he will wait for UPI to reach a decision.

August 28, 2005: Having not received the response promised by UPI, Balkanalysis.com Director Christopher Deliso points out that “almost three weeks have passed since you promised to look into this plagiarism matter,” and asks for an update on the situation.

August 30, 2005: UPI Editor-in-Chief Michael Marshall finally responds, apologizing “for the delay in this matter;” relays that “we are meeting about it today and I hope to have a response for you tomorrow.”

September 1, 2005: UPI Editor-in-Chief Michael Marshall replies as promised to Balkanalysis.com Director Christopher Deliso, laying out the terms of UPI’s future offer. Mr. Marshall admits that: “having looked into the matter you raised with us it’s clear we made a mistake. Our reporter did have independent knowledge of this story, reads Turkish, and knows Ms. Edmonds. However, under deadline pressure, he relied too heavily on your story without giving proper attribution. I apologize for that oversight. If you would like we can publish an item pointing out that this story originated on your site and giving you the proper attribution. Once again, I regret that you were not given the proper credit for your story.”

September 1, 2005: Balkanalysis.com Director Christopher Deliso asks, first of all, for further clarification of the terms laid out in the previous email: specifically, whether UPI’s correction will appear on the page where the story was originally found, or as a new news item, or in some other place on the UPI website.

Mr. Deliso secondly asks whether UPI is prepared to say that it plagiarized the Feb. 3 piece, “or simply “relied too heavily’ on it.” He thirdly asks whether the current UPI editorial staff has a “policy” of deliberately not citing Balkanalysis.com articles, and if so, why?

Finally, Mr. Deliso notes that at the foot of the offending UPI story in question, readers are invited to purchase it (and presumably other articles) for a certain reprinting fee. He expresses a wish to have clarified whether anyone has indeed purchased reprint rights for the piece in question, which allegedly “drew to heavily” on the Feb. 3 Balkanalysis.com article. He asks whether any moneys received through such an activity would rightfully have to be transferred from UPI to Balkanalysis.com.

September 2, 2005: UPI Editor-in-Chief Michael Marshall replies that the proposed correction “would go out as a new item as a part of our “Intelligence Watch’ feature, and refer back to the original story. It would go out on the same channels as the original story.”

However, Mr. Marshall dodges the second question, ignoring the issue of a plagiarism admission, instead proposing to write that “we should have acknowledged you and your site as a major source of our original story and failed to do so, which we regret and are now correcting, or words to that effect.”

In regards to the third question, the UPI Editor-in-Chief states that “I can assure you that no editor here was aware of the connection between the story we published and your site until you brought it to our notice,” which addresses the specific article but does not really answer the question of was there a policy.

However, Editor-in-Chief Marshall does let slip the intriguing statement that “our policy now is that all “briefs’ must be sourced.”

Finally, Mr. Marshall promises to look into whether or not the article in question has “been independently licensed by any client,” by asking the UPI marketing department.

These replies will prove extremely important later, as readers will discover.

September 6, 2005: Having not received a reply, Balkanalysis.com Director Christopher Deliso writes again to clarify whether or not the UPI article in question has in fact been purchased by any reader.

September 11, 2005: UPI Editor-in-Chief Michael Marshall finally responds, stating that “in response to your query of September 6, our marketing department tell (sic) me their records show no indiidual (sic) licensing of the story in question.” He adds that he will be out of the office from September 12-14.

September 19, 2005: Balkanalysis.com Director Christopher Deliso writes to UPI Editor-in-Chief Michael Marshall to inform him that a temporary absence will require putting off further negotiations for approximately 3 weeks.

September 21, 2005: UPI Editor-in-Chief Michael Marshall responds to express his agreement with this course of action.

October 17, 2005: Balkanalysis.com Director Christopher Deliso announces his desire to resume discussions in an email and again asks whether UPI plans “to print this apology that you had mentioned previously” and, more crucially, whether the media giant will state that they did indeed plagiarize Balkanalysis.com in the Feb. 4 “intelligence brief’ piece.

October 26, 2005: Having once again failed to receive a timely response, Balkanalysis.com Director Christopher Deliso again writes to UPI Editor-in-Chief Marshall; suggests that in the absence of further action Balkanalysis.com will be forced to go ahead with its “own measures based on our previous written correspondence.”

October 31, 2005: UPI Editor-in-Chief Michael Marshall finally responds, apologizing for the delay once again, explaining he had briefly been out sick. He proposes “to publish a correction along the lines described in our earlier exchanges. Please let me know if you have any further questions about this course of action, on which I believe we had agreed in principle.”

November 1, 2005: Balkanalysis.com Director Christopher Deliso writes back to apologize for Mr. Marshall’s illness and wishes him a speedy recovery. He states that the two parties are “in principle” agreed, and adds, generously, that no lawsuit will be filed.

Mr. Deliso then goes on to point out one major concern, being that, “the term “misused’ in [reference] to my article sounds rather euphemistic a la “collateral damage.’” He then draws attention to a “quite instructive” educational link (the above-cited UC Davis “Avoiding Plagiarism” article). He urges UPI editors to reflect on said article, and ask themselves whether “in fact [their] “misuse’ could more technically be termed “plagiarism’ and, if so, if there is any reason why you would not choose to use that word.”

November 10, 2005: Having waited patiently yet again for another 9 days and receiving no reply, Balkanalysis.com Director Christopher Deliso writes to UPI Editor-in-Chief Marshall to express his concern about not having received a response to his previous email and the questions raised therein: “please advise as soon as you are able.”

November 14, 2005: Having still received no reply from anyone at United Press International, Balkanalysis.com Director Christopher Deliso writes again to Editor-in-Chief Marshall and the General Staff to announce that the moment for final clarification is imminent, and that a response should be made ideally within 3 days.

November 15, 2005: UPI Editor-in-Chief Michael Marshall responds: “technical issues permitting, I plan to post a correction of the February article today, with the proper attribution and acknowledging that in February we failed to give that attribution. I believe this will meet your concerns.” Announces hasty departure for Thanksgiving vacation.

November 16, 2005: A UPI staffer sends a new link to Balkanalysis.com Director Christopher Deliso, which points to the Nov. 15 text with its “correction’ of the original Feb. 4, 2004 UPI “Intelligence Watch’ piece. This is the link referred to above.

Implications

There are several serious implications that arise from UPI’s inventive use of the Feb. 3 Balkanalysis.com piece, both in itself and especially when set in the context of the three-month written negotiation period, that has ended – to our great satisfaction – rather unfairly for us. Let’s go through them point by point.

1.) The official “apology” did not meet even the low standards decreed by the UPI editorial staff in the email of Sept. 2, 2005, on 3 counts.

First, it was not published “as a new item”- rather, it was a halfhearted, rehashed version of the Feb. 3 article, with a postscript expressing UPI’s apologies for the “oversight” of Feb. 4. So instead of the “new item” being the story of how UPI plagiarized another piece of work, their embarrassed apology was merely tacked on to another piece, an addendum to a rehashed bit of reporting that was never theirs to begin with. This Kafkaesque result only adds insult to injury and exposes UPI as an arrogant, disaffected bunch of media hacks.

Second, the “new item” was not published, as had been promised, in the news service’s “Intelligence Watch” feature; it was published on the general “Security and Terrorism” section page, but apparently did not merit its own listing under the “Intelligence Watch” sub-section. In other words, readers who might be in the habit of checking out the “Intelligence Watch” specifically may never have been aware of the correction. In our view, the story here was supposed to be their error; instead, what we got was the original story with a small apology at the end. Because they chose to weasel out of their obligations, we have been forced to make the story of their mistake into a seven-page report. As Lewis Libby now knows (in a different context), it could have all been so much easier if it had been done right the first time around!

Third, and perhaps most significantly, UPI utterly failed in its promise to “refer back to the original story” in its “new item”/corrected piece. In the world of online journalism, we feel confident that by the statement “refer back to the original story,” one reasonably can expect to mean the embedding of a hyperlink to a specific URL at which can be found said original story.

However, UPI unfortunately decided not to do this. And, not only did they not insert a link to the original Feb. 3 Balkanalysis.com story, they also failed to insert a link to their Feb 4. plagiarized piece. Thus, readers who might have wished to compare the original stories, and thus the veracity of UPI’s claims, could not do so. To show that their brazenness knows no bounds, UPI failed even to provide the titles of both original pieces; they thus ensured that there would be no chance for readers to “refer back to the original story.” UPI thus acted in utterly bad faith.

On the other hand, Balkanalysis.com has always provided links to articles it has cited – including many interesting and informative ones from UPI authors – and will continue to do so.

Unfortunately, it seems that certain of the “big” media (UPI is not alone in this deficiency) look down on adding links. One might speculate that this reticence owes to a belief that information appears “more exclusive” or more “original” if there is no other source linked. But this is just a matter of image, not substance, as we will see.

2.) UPI high officials deliberately chose to avoid the issue of plagiarism, perhaps out of a desire to avoid embarrassment.

The last few years have seen various major plagiarism scandals (most famously, that involving former NY Times reporter Jayson Blair) that have rocked the mainstream media, those vaunted torchbearers of ethical standards. In that context, it is understandable why UPI would not want to add its name to the list of those who shall live on in infamy. However, this time they have made the mistake of picking the wrong small independent media body to exploit.

In our opinion, both fairness and patience were expressed from our side, all throughout this arduous three-month negotiation process. Rather than print an immediate accusatory story upon discovering this violation in August, we gave them not one but four chances to consider whether the claim of plagiarism was valid in this case. How many people would exhibit such tactical patience?

However, after the first statement from UPI Editor-in-Chief Michael Marshall on Aug. 10, in which he stated, “be assured that we take the charge of plagiarism very seriously,” not one word was written in response to this charge.

It thus appears that UPI does indeed take the charge of plagiarism very seriously- that is, seriously enough to avoid it at all costs. This is very telling in itself. We thought only the White House and Pentagon could get away with such behavior. Guess not.

3.) UPI announces a new editorial “policy’- 98 years after having started operations.

Perhaps the strangest accidental disclosure in the above correspondence is Editor-in-Chief Marshall’s statement of Sept. 2 that “our policy now is that all “briefs’ must be sourced.”

Considering that UPI takes pride in being a venerable old media institution established in 1907, and that it looks forward eagerly to its centennial anniversary, it seems strange that it took until 2005 for wild innovations like providing source attribution to be implemented. It’s like when after Abu Ghraib Rumsfeld gave the soldiers a manual on proper prisoner treatment; you’d think the US Army had been formed yesterday.

In both cases, why does it take public embarrassment to force a lumbering institution into even a weak sort of accountability?

However, the most interesting implication of the statement, though it is a subtle one, is that Mr. Marshall seems to have been trying to draw a distinction between regular UPI news articles/analyses and “intelligence briefs.’ In our original email of Aug. 10, Balkanalysis.com Director Christopher Deliso questioned their motive, i.e., whether the hasty cut-and-copy hack job was accomplished because the writers thought a piece “buried” within an “intelligence watch’ brief would be less likely to be spotted. This question was never answered.

The larger question that thus emerges is this: given the long experience and vast talent of many of its staff, why had the question of providing ‘sourcing’ in UPI’s intelligence briefs never come up?

Although it is speculative, we sense that basic marketing strategies led to this decision. The word “intelligence’ is as valuable to news agencies as the word “feta’ is to Greek cheese producers. When one claims to be offering “intelligence’ information, therefore, it is understood that this refers to valuable, unique and hard-to-get information. People understand that for various reasons, oftentimes the name of a source cannot be given. Fair enough.

However, when all you are doing is reading foreign newspapers – or, better yet, stealing the translations from others who did – the result can hardly qualify as “intelligence’ according to most people’s definition of the word.

Indeed, we feel that we have been rather good at avoiding the temptation to “sex up” information and present it as being more than it is. The only times we do not provide links or publication references are when that information can be found nowhere else- this is why readers recognize when we have something exclusive to report, because we keep a fine line and clear limits to what we write and how. This requires patience and determination, but we feel our readers appreciate this.

Certainly, we did not try to play up the Feb. 3 article about Sibel Edmonds as a great work of “intelligence’ gathering on our part; it was merely a synthesis of relevant information centered on a unique translation of a Turkish media article that was and is readily available via a hyperlink. Really, can something that can be linked to ever qualify as “intelligence?’

Which brings us back to the question of why UPI (and many other large media bodies) are so link-averse; were they to provide the reader with the freedom to see where their information actually originated, the reader might no longer be so impressed with these so-called “intelligence briefs.’ Let’s just hope that people who are paying for UPI’s subscription “intelligence briefs’ service are getting more exclusive information than a daily recap of what foreign newspapers are saying. Still, when it comes to the Balkans anyway, with one-billionth of the budget and resources available to UPI we can outdo them at will, whenever we so choose. And this goes for many other rich media bodies too.

While this whole incident was unfortunate, and a colossal waste of our time, it was worth mentioning- if only to show that we are very serious about plagiarism and will act swiftly and decisively to put a stop to this practice wherever possible.

With the help of our loyal readers, we have been alerted to the problem on more than one occasion. Above all, it is a matter of fairness and respect: if you expect someone to cite, quote and link to your articles, then you should do the same. Even – no, especially – with articles we disagree with, we always make a point of linking to them. This is what media freedom is all about- giving readers the information they need to come to an informed and independent decision. If UPI staffers are so pressed for time that they have to resort to ransacking other people’s texts, perhaps they are taking on more than they can handle. Come on, we all have deadlines!

To sum up, publishers have two choices: either quote/link to Balkanalysis.com articles, or else cough up for the reprint fee. We don’t care about page rank; we are not working 10-14 hours a day here to give UPI and the rest free content. Finally, it’s worth noting that at no time have they ever given us assurances that any future profits from reprint fees on the Feb. 4 article would be redirected this way.

Note: Readers who wish to discuss anything mentioned in this text with UPI Editor-in-Chief Michael Marshall can write to him at: mmarshall@upi.com. Comments for us can be sent to contact@balkanalysis.com.