A 'Political Hit' On Progressive Firebrand Chris Hedges: The New Republic Charges Chris Hedges With Plagiarism — Yet Ignores the Plagiarism of its Own Writer, Alan Dershowitz

The New Republic accuses activist Chris Hedges (left) of plagiarism, but says nothing about the plagiarism of its own conservative writer Alan Dershowitz (middle) which has been proven by noted scholar Norman Finkelstein (right).
(Chris Hedges photo by theNerdPatrol; Alan Dershowitz photo by The Huntington; Normal Finkelstein photo
screen capture from YouTube)

The timing of this article doesn't pass the smell test: Why raise charges of plagiarism that date back from 2003 through 2010? And why do it right now? Looks like Chris Hedges made some very powerful people very angry recently.

The New Republic has published articles by Harvard-based lawyer and pro-Israel pundit Alan Dershowitz. Dershowitz has, at least to my satisfaction, been proven to be a systematic plagiarist by noted scholar Normal Finkelstein.  Yet a search of the New Republic using the term "Plagiarism" turned up articles on Senator Rand Paul,  and Vice President Joe Biden, and of course Chris Hedges - but nothing on Alan Dershowitz.

Subsequent to Finkelstein's revelations about Dershowitz's plagiarism, Dershowitz became a key player in getting Finklestein fired (by way of denying him tenure) from DePaul University.

To be clear, one person's plagiarism does not excuse the others. But if the New Republic is going to make the charge of plagiarism against Chris Hedges, it should make the same charge against one of its own writers, Alan Dershowitz.

The New Republic, it should be noted, is a conservative publication. Alan Dershowitz is a well-known conservative supporter of Israel, while both Chris Hedges and Norman Finkelstein have been staunch critics of Israel.—Ronald David Jackson

The Troubling Case of Chris Hedges Pulitzer winner. Lefty hero. Plagiarist.

By Christopher Ketcham
In early 2010, the editors at Harper’s Magazine began reviewing a lengthy manuscript submitted by Chris Hedges, a former New York Times reporter. In the piece, Hedges had turned his eye to Camden, New Jersey, one of the most downtrodden cities in the nation. Hedges’s editor at Harper’s, Theodore Ross, who left the magazine in 2011 and is now a freelance writer, was excited when he saw the draft. “I thought it was a great story about a topic—poverty—that nobody covers enough,” Ross said.

The trouble began when Ross passed the piece along to the fact-checker assigned to the story. As Ross and the fact-checker began working through the material, they discovered that sections of Hedges’s draft appeared to have been lifted directly from the work of a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter named Matt Katz, who in 2009 had published a four-part series on social and political dysfunction in Camden.

Given Hedges’s institutional pedigree, this discovery shocked the editors at Harper’s. Hedges had been a star foreign correspondent at the Times, where he reported from war zones and was part of the team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for covering global terrorism. In 2002, he had received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. He is a fellow at the Nation Institute. He has taught at Princeton University and Columbia University. He writes a weekly column published in the widely read progressive website Truthdig and frequently republished on the Truthout website. He is the author of twelve books, including the best-selling American Fascists. Since leaving the Times in 2005, he has evolved into a polemicist of the American left. For his fierce denunciations of the corporate state, his attacks on the political elite, and his enthusiasm for grassroots revolt, he has secured a place as a firebrand revered among progressive readers.

A leading moralist of the left, however, had now been caught plagiarizing at one of the oldest magazines of the left.

Ross and the fact-checker, who remains an editor at the magazine and asked that his name not be used in this story, sat down to discuss the matter before approaching Ellen Rosenbush, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, and Rick MacArthur, the publisher, who knew Hedges personally. The fact-checker was assigned to speak to Hedges about the material lifted from Matt Katz. According to Ross and the fact-checker, Hedges told them that he had shared the draft with Katz, who, Hedges claimed, had approved his use of Katz’s language and reporting. (Rosenbush and MacArthur declined to comment on the record for this article.)

But when the editors at Harper’s asked Katz about Hedges’s account, Katz told them he had not in fact seen the manuscript. “When I went back to Hedges, he tried to clarify by saying he didn’t mean that he had actually showed Katz the draft,” the fact-checker said. “He lied to me—lied to his fact-checker.”

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