The Challenge of Determining Podcast Plagiarism
On July 26, journalist and author Jonathan M. Katz took to Twitter to call out the Chilluminati Podcast for allegedly plagiarizing from his book, Gangsters of Capitalism.
At issue was a July 23 episode of the podcast entitled The Mysterious Smedley Butler with Butler being the subject of Katz’ book.
According to Katz, the similarities were unignorable. It involved several pieces of information that were exclusive to his work, several passages that he felt were paraphrased or repeated nearly verbatim from his book, and other details.
However, the most egregious examples include a moment in the podcast where one of the hosts mentioned, “This person went to Haiti and asked…” even though that person was almost certainly Katz himself.
He also took issue with Butler’s nickname of “The Fighting Hell-Devil Marine”, which was not in any of the sources listed by Chilluminati and was actually added to Butler’s Wikipedia page after the fact.
Katz distilled all of his observations into a lengthy article, which he published as part of his newsletter. He provided a both an AI and a human created transcript of the podcast and highlighted how several plagiarism detection tools flagged passages as being similar to his work.
The Chilluminati Podcast, for their part, have denied any wrongdoing. Instead, they said they are seeking out legal council and “plan to move forward with whatever actions we see necessary”.
The podcast did provide citations for the episode, including five articles, two Wikipedia entries and a government document. However, as Katz pointed out, some of the information shared was not located in any of those documents.
To that end, Jesse Cox, one of the podcasters, did admit in a Tweet that he obtained the information about Katz going to Haiti from an article not listed in those sources. To that end, he still denies using Katz’ work in any way.
That, is where the story largely is at this point. Katz is continuing to provide regular updates on his article and his Twitter, but the podcast seems to have moved along, already having released its next episode.
But that raises some difficult questions. Was it plagiarism? If it was, what can be done about it?
The answers, however, may not be all that satisfying.
Looking Deeper
(Note: I reached out to the Chilluminati Podcast via email and did not receive a response.)
One of the challenges here is that there is no way to know exactly what was going on in the run-up and the recording of this podcast. Though we can analyze the transcript and listen to the podcast, that tells us very little about what exactly was used.
To that end, there are a few things that are agreed upon. First, the podcast did provide sources for much of its information. However, it is clear that at least some of the information presented was not included in those sources.
Couple that with Cox’s admission that there was another article referenced but not included, it is clear that the source list is incomplete. In short, the podcast is giving the impression that it is citing its sources, but clearly failed to cite all of them in this case.
What’s impossible to know is whether it was Katz’ book that was used or, as Cox claimed, another article. The latter seems more likely given that all the other sources were articles and Wikipedia entries, but we have no way of knowing, and Katz claims that the text similarities indicate it was his book.
According to Cox, this was an off the cuff comment, and he didn’t pursue it further because he wasn’t working on a paper or article.
From a purely legal standpoint, this is purely moot. Copyright does not apply to factual information, and the amount of copying that Katz alleges isn’t likely to create a legal case for copyright infringement. Simply put, not citing factual information is illegal.
However, it is unethical, and that’s the component of this story that disturbs me the most. Not that alleged copying took place, but how far some are going to justify it.
The Ethics of Podcast Plagiarism
In the midst of the controversy, attorney Elliot Fladen took to Twitter, to defend Chilluminati, as part of a thread on the dispute, he said the following:
As someone who has studied plagiarism for over 20 years and regularly serves as an expert witness in this field, I find this line of thinking disturbing.
First off, it’s very clear that plagiarism is a major issue outside of academia and journalism. We’ve seen serious plagiarism cases in fiction literature, photography, comic books and much more. Though I agree that the overlap in these cases between plagiarism and copyright is massive, these are still cases of people being accused of taking the works of others and passing them off as their own, creating an ethical backlash.
However, he is correct to say that the citation standards are different between podcasts and other media. Every media has their own citation standards and norms. But podcasting has seen its share of plagiarism scandals too, including Crime Junkie and The Dollop to name just a two.
Being a podcaster is not a carte blanche to plagiarize. Proof of this is that Chilluminati does provide a sources list. The issue is that it wasn’t a complete source list on this episode. That could have easily been a mistake but, without the full list, we’ll never be certain.
To that end, one of the main criticisms of Katz has been the way he handled it. Calling out the podcast aggressively on Twitter. As someone who got into this field because he was a repeated victim of plagiarism, I understand that urge. Furthermore, I admit, that I handled my first case of plagiarism in a very angry, aggressive way too.
That said, I agree that Twitter is a poor tool for resolving this kind of dispute (or any dispute, really). Tempers flare quickly there, and nuance is lost almost instantly. Cases like this one are rarely about good guys and bad guys, but they quickly devolve into that on Twitter.
While I would have handled this case differently, I also refuse to blame someone dealing with their first plagiarism battle for being angry and taking a less-than-ideal approach. His emotions and his response are more than understandable and very common for people in that position, even if you disagree with his findings.
In short, even if you feel he handled it poorly, it’s easy to understand why he took the approach he did. After all, everyone involved in this story is only human.
Bottom Line
This case is an excellent example of how nuance gets lost. A case where one or more sources were likely omitted from a podcast’s show notes became about how no one cares about plagiarism in podcasting and whether the podcasters were thieves.
For me, even though there is some similar verbiage, I find it hard to believe that a podcast that exclusively cited articles and Wikipedia entries would also use a book and not include it in their citations. When they say that the information likely came from an article, it seems likely. However, without that article in hand, it’s impossible to prove that.
I can understand how the podcast would miss an unplanned citation, but this shouldn’t be an impetus for them to defend all plagiarism in podcasting, but an opportunity to fix the error and improve their processes.
In the 20 years I’ve been studying plagiarism, the online discussion of the issue has grown both more heated and less nuanced. That makes cases like this one very difficult to parse. While I think that Chilluminaiti was in the wrong here, clearly omitting source(s) they used, I also don’t think it was fully deliberate or highly egregious.
To be clear, this isn’t a copyright case and there isn’t a lawsuit coming. This is solely about the ethics of attribution. But, even when discussing ethics, one has to leave room for a nuance and, right now, that doesn’t seem possible.
Simply put, both sides have dug in and drawn their battle lines. It’s unlikely that we will see any real answers at this point.
In the end, this case is a reminder. If you host a podcast you need to focus on your attribution. Otherwise, you leave the door open to controversies like this one, controversies that can be easily avoided with a brief mention and a link in the show notes.
It’s not just about being ethical, it’s about avoiding bigger problems down the road.
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