I do not like plagiarism. I do not like it at all. A few years ago, I was fact-checking my book by looking for a particular phrase that I knew I’d written in a Guardian op-ed. Another story came up, published in The Hindu by a female journalist named Ashna Krishnakumar. She had paraphrased and lifted quotes, but changed words here and there. When I approached my union, the NUJ, they said because it was not identical, they couldn’t help. I found that shocking. So I wrote to N. Ram, a veteran Indian journalist and senior editor at the Hindu who has links with the Guardian, and pointed out the excessive similarities between Krishnakumar’s piece and mine. He wrote to me after a while to say that they had discovered that she had done the same with other pieces, and was let go from the Hindu. Good. Except that she won a Scholl award, a journalism prize, that I had applied for and not got. Of course I wouldn’t necessarily have got it, but that she had, with maybe plagiarised work, was infuriating.
So, perhaps I am sensitive about plagiarism. Or maybe it’s because I started my journalism career as a fact-checker for The Nation. It was a fantastic job, and it taught me about being accurate, because people check. Or so I thought. In fact, it is a curious fact that modern publishing does not incorporate any formal fact-checking in its publishing process. I fact-checked my own book; other people read it for me and corrected egregious errors; translators later picked up other stuff (thank you, in particular, to my Swedish translator Nancy Westman). Readers wrote in after publication with other points to make. That sounds like it was full of errors. It wasn’t. But there were a handful that were published that shouldn’t have been, despite the manuscript being read by at least two dozen people over a six month editing process.
That’s just how publishing works. If you want a fact-checker, you pay for it yourself.
So maybe I shouldn’t be surprised at my discoveries of the last couple of days. I borrowed from the library a copy of a book by Nigel Cawthorne, called “Pirates of the 21st Century.” I’d never heard of Cawthorne, but the book was shelved next to Jay Bahadur’s Deadly Waters, which I have read and rate highly, so I borrowed it. It was fluently written and readable, but by halfway through Chapter 1, it was obvious that Cawthorne hadn’t actually gone anywhere and done any reporting. So how had he got all these direct quotes? There were quotes from Somali pirates, fishermen, crew members. All sorts. There were no footnote numbers so I immediately went to the back of the book to see the list of sources/references. Nothing. No bibliography, no references. Sort of out of idle curiosity, I put a sentence with a Somali name into Google. It came up, verbatim, in a piece by FT shipping correspondent Robert Wright. I know Robert so wrote and asked if he had been asked permission. Cawthorne had paraphased the descriptive parts, but the quotes were identical. He had not written, for example, “as told to FT journalist Robert Wright,” or “as Robert Wright reported,” which would be the usual convention. Robert said he hadn’t been asked for permission, but that the quote had come from the wires.
I carried on. Every now and then I put a sentence into Google and found a source with identical quotes. By halfway through the book I realised Cawthorne hadn’t done any interviewing or reporting. That would be fine, if there had been attributions. There were a few here and there – eg “told BBC News,” – but 95% of quotes had no source given, nor any indication given that Cawthorne had not got the quotes himself. Here are some examples. Page references are from the 2010 paperback edition published by John Blake publishing. See? That’s a source.
CAWTHORNE p.51
“We simply want the money so our families can live,” said pirate leader Abdullah Hassan, “but they want to recover the weapons to fight the government troops.” He bristled at the accusation that the pirates were in league with with Islamist militia and were helping to train them. “If anyone has lessons of war to learn, it is certainly not us. “
DAILY MAIL
by Manon Queroil
‘We simply want the money so our families can live, but they want to recover the weapons to fight the government troops,’ says Hassan, who bristles at the idea that the Islamist militia helped train the pirates: ‘If anyone has lessons of war to learn, it is certainly not us.’
Source here.
CAWTHORNE, p.68
As soon as the ship’s security officer Michael Groves, an ex-policeman who had also served in the Royal Navy, heard that two speedboats were approaching, he headed up to the deck. “As soon as I went on deck I came under automatic fire,” he recalled. “Then a rocket grenade blew me off my feet. The next thing I remember is rolling around, trying to check for shrapnel.”
BBC News Thursday, 17 May 2007
After accepting the honour Mr Groves, an ex-policemen, told how he was called to the deck after two speed boats were spotted approaching the liner. “As soon as I went on the deck I came under automatic fire straight away. A rocket grenade blew me off my feet,” he said.
“The next thing I remember is rolling around and trying to check for shrapnel.”
Source here
CAWTHORNE, p. 118
Fellow crewman Anthony Timudo had a slightly different recollection. “It was early on 21 August, when two armed men came on a speedboat and at gun point ordered our ship’s captain to stop. Minutes later, another 18 pirates came in another speedboat and wrested control of our ship.’
TIMES OF India, OCT 18, 2008, Byline GOVIND KAMAT MAAD
Narrating the hijack, Anthony shudders. “It was early on August 21, when two armed men came on a speed boat and at gun point ordered our ship’s captain to stop. Minutes later, another 18 pirates came in another speed boat and wrested control of our ship.
Source here
CAWTHORNE P.118
Many of us ran out on deck, said 28 year old crewman Jeevan Kiran D’Souza. “We saw a group of men in two tiny speedboats close to the ship. The ship’s radar had failed to pick them up. The men were firing in the air…There were 16 of them. They threw a ladder fitted with grappling hooks over the side of the ship and clambered aboard. They stormed all cabins and herded the entire crew into one small room, and told the captain to cut the engine.”
INDIAN EXPRESS, OCT 18 2008, byline SHAJU PHILLIP
Early on August 21, when the ship was moving along the Somalian coast in the Gulf of Aden that separates the horn of Africa from the Arabian peninsula, Jeevan heard loud gunfire. “Many of us ran out on the deck. We saw a group of men in two tiny speedboats close to the ship. The ship’s radar had failed to pick them up. The men were firing in the air,” he said. “There were 16 of them. They threw a ladder fitted with grappling hooks over the side of the ship and clambered aboard. They stormed all cabins and herded the entire crew into a small room, and told the captain to cut the engine.”
Source here
CAWTHORNE, p. 168
Later the captain was escorted up to the bridge and discovered that the pirates really did know what they were doing. “Someone was expertly steering the vessel, reading the radar very well,” said Surahmat. “I remember thinking, my God, he can handle the vessel better than I can.”
TIME ASIA, November 2004, byline Simon Elegant and Kuala Sepetang
Later, says Surahmat, the pirates escorted him to the bridge. “Up there I realized that they were completely familiar with all the equipment. Someone was expertly steering the vessel, reading the radar very well. I remember thinking: ‘My God, he can handle the ship better than I can.’ I’d thought pirates were just a bunch of petty robbers who jumped onto a ship, robbed the crew, then disappeared. But these pirates were totally beyond my imagination. They were professionals.”
Source here.
That same paragraph, by the way, was reproduced in James Forest’s book “Combating Terrorism and Insurgency in the 21st Century,” which is where I found it first on Google. Unlike Cawthorne, though, Forest cites his original sources in footnotes.
So why does it matter? Because other reporters gathered those quotes. They went to India and Somalia and did the interviews. They got the bylines because they did the work. Cawthorne lifted their work and appropriated it. I consider it plagiarism.
So I wrote to John Blake publishers yesterday, and had no response. Today I wrote to Nigel Cawthorne. I got a reply 9 minutes later. It said, “Mea Culpa.”Another email arrived a couple of minutes afterwards. This one said, “One source is plagiarism; two is research.” I wrote this in response:
“What utter rubbish. 95% of your book is copied from other people’s work. If you had put sources, that would be a different matter. As you didn’t, it’s plagiarism. I will be writing to your publishers. And to National Geographic. I don’t see why you should pass off theft as original work when other people do the actual work.”
He replied with, “As I am not a pirate, plainly all my material comes from written sources.”
Cawthorne’s website, which I recommend visiting, if only for entertainment, says he has written 80 books and that his flat is known as the “book-factory.” 80 books? If all he does is steal work and cobble it together, I’m not surprised at his output. I assume from his responses that he thinks what he does is acceptable. I think people think such behaviour is increasingly acceptable. But it isn’t.
So. I’m waiting to hear from his publisher. I may also write to National Geographic to see how they feel about being plagiarised. I suspect they won’t like it: they do have fact-checkers. And John Blake Publishers should be ashamed. Cawthorne obviously isn’t.
UPDATE:
An email from a publishing assistant at John Blake Publishers:
Dear Rose,
I apologise on behalf of John Blake Publishing Ltd for the issues you
have found in your copy of Nigel Cawthorne’s book. Thank you for writing
to inform us of the problems with plagiarism that you found in it. I
have informed the editor of your e-mail, and should we do a reprint then
we will take steps to make the necessary corrections. Further to this, I
have sent your e-mail on to the author, and I apologise for the abrupt
response you have received from him.
Again, I apologise for any inconvenience caused.
Yours sincerely,
C*** M*****
Publishing Assistant
John Blake Publishing Limited
3 Bramber Court, 2 Bramber Road, London, W14 9PB
Telephone: +44 (0) 20 7381 0666
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7381 6868
Of course if they were to reprint the book, it would – in my view, lawyers - have to be entirely rewritten. “Inconvenience?” Hardly. More like despondency and despair that people – authors, publishers – get away with such crap.
