On Sunday, Paul Elam, head cheese of A Voice for Men, proudly announced that his colleagues at the phony WhiteRibbon.org website were republishing a kind of shitty article on domestic violence by Tanveer Ahmed, a columnist for the Australian and a man Elam described as an “esteemed psychiatrist, author, [and] media regular.”
Wait, did I say he was a columnist for the Australian? Make that former columnist. The Guardian reports that the Australian has just fired Ahmed – for plagiarizing a chunk of the very article that Elam has just republished.
It’s the second time Ahmed has lost a media gig for plagiarism.
The plagiarism was first discovered by blogger Ketan Joshi, who wrote:
Out of curiosity, and following some of the social media commentary around Ahmed’s piece, I plugged his writing into a bunch of online plagiarism checkers, and, lo and behold, a portion of his article is either plagiarised from work he’s published well into the past, or ripped directly from another website.
In one of the many ironies of this case, the sentence that Ahmed plagiarised virtually word for word for his Australian piece was written by feminist and MRA bete noire Amanda Marcotte.
Here’s the sentence as it appeared in Ahmed’s article:
…it is critical that improving arrest and prosecution rates, establishing shelters and abuse hotlines, pushing for state provisions against stalking, and creating protections for immigrants all have the goal of getting victims out of abusive -relationships.
And here’s the original from an American Prospect article by Marcotte:
Improving arrest and prosecution rates, establishing shelters and abuse hotlines, pushing for state provisions against stalking, and creating protections for immigrants all have the goal of getting victims out of abusive relationships and into safe situations.
Ahmed — at least in the version of his piece up on WhiteRibbon.org — actually footnotes Marcotte’s piece, though he presents her words as his own, not as a quote. (Yep, fellas, that’s still plagiarism.) He also manages to misspell her last name.
In addition to this bit of plagiarism, Joshi uncovered a number of similar examples in other articles recently written by Ahmed, and some examples of his own writing that he had repurposed numerous times in different pieces.
Another irony? Ahmed is an “ambassador” for the real White Ribbon Australia, a genuine anti-domestic violence campaign, yet he’s allowing his piece to be republished on A Voice for Men’s WhiteRibbon.org website, a site that’s impersonating the real White Ribbon campaign in what seems like an obvious ploy to create confusion about the real organization.
In other words, he’s allowing Elam and his cronies to publish his plagiarised article on their fraudulent website.
This will do wonders for the credibility of all involved.
Not long ago, Elam removed posts by his former number two dude at AVFM, John Hembling, after it was pointed out that one of his posts was plagiarised. Will Elam or the AVFM staffers who ostensibly run WhiteRibbon.org remove Ahmed’s post as well?
H/T — @clementine_ford and @drspacejunk
I’m not sure I’d condemn him for his article ending up reposted on Elam’s site. I’m not convinced Elam is a big fan of asking for permission.
Seconding what Dodom said. I think Paul straight up ripped it from Ahmed, considering that he (Elam) has complete disdain for the original White Ribbon. And he doesn’t ever examine his sources.
Who else would be running it? Is it a serious possibility that someone else is pulling strongs behind the scenes?
Actually, it’s about ethics in domestic violence journalism.
AVFM doesn’t give a crap about male victims of domestic violence. They’ll gladly call any guy who’s been beaten up by his girlfriend a pussy. The only thing they’re fighting for in that regard is to claim that men have some basic, inalienable right to hit whoever they want.
Not only is he a plagiarist, but he actually bobbles up the very words he’s lifting, making them into an unwieldy mess. That’s a crime against language, that is.
That fraudulent site he made to try and steel donations from a real charity is still up? How is that even a thing he is allowed to do?
If I make the site AVoiceForTheMen.org, call myself Paulie Ellam, and ask for donations to “definitely help men but for real” he’d be cool with that, right? Hell, money going straight to my personal paypal account would probably still help more dudes than the money going to Elam’s wife’s personal paypal account.
How many times has Elam defended domestic violence as not only acceptable, but a goal for his campaign?
How can this “I wrote a story where a man permanently injured his (cheating) wife” guy even pretend to care about domestic violence like this?
My question is, how did this guy get hired as a journalist again after being sacked for plagiarism the first time?
@ Fnoicby
One thing I learned doing legal work for a major news organisation was that ethics is a very flexible concept in journalism.
If you’re interested in that sort of field have a read up on the Leverson Enquiry.
For what it’s worth, Elam does say that Ahmed gave permission to reprint the article:
But, again, that’s Elam, so, grain of salt and all that.
I remembered the other day that one of my friends in university got himself voted in on the student committee, the member for men’s issues… he started a group for male students who had suffered abuse (a couple of women joked about how they abused men and I found that annoying, but… it wasn’t the majority of female students or anything) and the Feel Your Balls campaign for awareness of testicular cancer. I think the position only lasted a year, but even within that small body of students, it did more real things for actual men’s issues than anyone at AVFM ever has.
That’s not what I meant. What I was alluding to is that officially the site no longer belongs to Elam; he handed off “ownership” of the blog to Erin Pizzey. But it’s still “hosted” by AVFM and I think it’s pretty obvious that Elam is still running the show.
It’s very strange that Ahmed would give his permission for his piece to be hosted on AVfM’s fake website. Maybe he thought that it was going up on the official White Ribbon site? In which case, he should probably hurry up and try to get it removed.
No idea what to make of this.
Unrelated to this, I just ordered a pizza with extra cheese. They apparently thought I meant all of the cheese in the world. I can’t eat this.
Paul Elam is quite unscrupulous when it comes to the affairs of AVfM. He portrays himself as a human rights crusader yet constantly participates in morally dubious activities such harassment and misinformation.
Send it to me, I’ll make an earnest attempt (and food supplies would be very welcome as we attend to dig our way out of the house here in Boston)
Would you send me that pizza, dhag? The more cheese, the better as far as I’m concerned.
You’ll have to fight it out for the pizza. :p
Also, wwth, that’s exactly what my wife said, except she already ate. She went into trance staring at the cheese.
MRAs copy-pasting everything they put up on their site? Color me surprised. [/sarcasm]
Did we really expect anything different after looking at their “memes”?
I’m beginning to wonder if this Ahmed dude isn’t an MRA infiltrator. He’s done a number of things that are at blatant odds with White Ribbon’s stated goals.
By their fruits shall ye know them…
I saw Ketan Joshi’s tweets getting bashed into by a different crowd from the usual denialists he attracts – he’s an advocate for renewable energy and usually has the anti-wind farm types baying for blood.
Clementine Ford knocked Dr Tanveer Ahmed’s article into pieces on Daily Life last week before Ketan got to it: http://www.dailylife.com.au/news-and-views/dl-opinion/white-ribbon-ambassador-tanveer-ahmeds-dangerous-message-on-domestic-violence-20150209-139yjs.html
And they now have a follow-up article on the plagiarism: http://www.dailylife.com.au/news-and-views/tanveer-ahmed-sacked-again-for-plagiarising-his-views-on-domestic-violence-20150217-13gn3l.html
White Ribbon Australia (the real White Ribbon!) is expected to have a further statement out later today in addition to the one they’d already released last week: http://www.whiteribbon.org.au/update/white-ribbon-australia-statement-dr-tanveer-ahmed-clementine-ford
I agree that reusing old work word-for-word is pretty lazy, but plagiarism? Can you really plagiarize yourself?
emilygoddess – MOD | February 16, 2015 at 4:45 pm
Believe it or not, yeah. I had that issue in college when I wanted to re-use my older projects for newer classes. I got told I literally couldn’t do that because that’s plagiarism under the law, apparently.
There are a few legal cases where musicians have been sued by companies holding the rights to their earlier work when they’ve produced similar stuff for a new publisher.