Mehdi Hasan, the anchor of MSNBC, is facing accusations of plagiarism in connection with a previous article he authored endorsing the idea of parents resorting to physical discipline for their children.
Lee Fang, an investigative journalist with The Intercept, recently penned an article on Substack, accusing the ‘Mehdi Hasan Show’ host of “passing off others” reporting as his own, at times without any citation at all. Fang contends that Hasan’s early foray into journalism, a column he wrote in support of corporal punishment for children titled “No Harm In Smacking,” published in January 2000, was almost entirely lifted from an article titled “When to Spank,” which had been printed in U.S. News and World Report two years prior, with minimal alterations.
“In one of his first attempts at journalism, Hasan authored a column in defence of spanking children, “No Harm In Smacking,” in January 2000, that is nearly a word-for-word duplication of the article, “When to Spank,” published two years earlier in U.S. News and World Report,” Fang writes.
The Intercept journalist argues that similarities between Hasan’s article and the one published two years ago appear from the beginning. Hasan began his piece for a London-based newspaper with “Anti-smacking crusaders have consistently relied upon inconclusive studies to make sweeping over-generalisations about the dangers of smacking”, which Fang highlighted, closely resembled the line used by co-authors Lynn Rosellini and Anna Mulrine in their news article on the topic for U.S. News and World Report.
In yet another instance cited by Fang, Hasan allegedly copied a whole paragraph from the same source and even included a verbatim quote from the U.S. News and World Report piece without proper acknowledgement.
Hasan:
“In 1998, even the American Academy of Pediatrics toned down its blanket injunction against smacking, though it still takes a dim view of the practice. In fact, an AAP conference on corporal punishment in 1996 concluded that, in certain circumstances, smacking, or “spanking”, may be an effective backup to other forms of discipline. ‘There’s no evidence that a child who is spanked moderately is going to grow up to be a criminal or antisocial or violent,’ said S Kenneth Schonberg, a paediatrics professor co-chairing the meeting. In fact, the reverse may be true: a few studies suggest that, when used appropriately, spanking makes small children less likely to fight with others and more likely to obey their parents.”
U.S. News and World Report:
“This week, even the American Academy of Pediatrics is expected to tone down its blanket injunction against spanking, though it still takes a dim view of the practice and encourages parents to develop discipline alternatives. An AAP conference on corporal punishment in 1996 concluded that in certain circumstances, spanking may be an effective backup to other forms of discipline. “There’s no evidence that a child who is spanked moderately is going to grow up to be a criminal or antisocial or violent,” says S. Kenneth Schonberg, a paediatrics professor who co-chaired the conference. In fact, the reverse may be true: A few studies suggest that when used appropriately, spanking makes small children less likely to fight with others and more likely to obey their parents.”
According to Fang’s report, Hasan referred to a study conducted by U.S. News and World Report regarding Sweden’s prohibition on parental spanking in 1979, and replicated almost the entire paragraph word-for-word, without crediting the source or its authors.
Hasan:
“No study demonstrates that spanking a child leads to abuse – indeed, it may be the other way around. Parents who end up abusing their children may misuse all forms of discipline, including spanking. Contrary to Mr Saunders’ assertions, Sweden hasn’t borne out the spanking prohibitionists’ fears, either. After Sweden outlawed spanking by parents in 1979, reports of serious child abuse actually increased by more than 400 per cent over 10 years, although the actual number of reports – 583 cases in 1994 – was still quite small. Sweden’s experience does not prove that banning spanking creates more child abuse, but it does suggest that outlawing the practice may do little to lower the rate of child abuse and instead deprive parents of an effective and common disciplining procedure.”
U.S. News and World Report:
“But no study demonstrates that spanking a child leads to abuse–indeed, it may be the other way around. Parents who end up abusing their children may misuse all forms of discipline, including spanking. Sweden, often cited as a test case, hasn’t borne out the spanking prohibitionists’ fears, either. After Sweden outlawed spanking by parents in 1979, reports of serious child abuse actually increased by more than 400 per cent over 10 years, though the actual number of reports–583 cases in 1994–was still quite small. Sweden’s experience does not prove that banning spanking creates more child abuse, but it does suggest that outlawing the practice may do little to lower the rate of child abuse.”
“The Hasan column on spanking is a clear violation of the simple ethics code outlined by the Society for Professional Journalists, which is to “always attribute.” The articles are not hosted online anywhere publicly — I found them via a newspaper archive — so I have copied them above,” Fang said.
In addition to this, Fang also drew attention to another instance from 2000 when Hasan had lifted entire passages from another writer’s article without providing proper citations. Hasan, Fang contends, used passages from “The 94 Percent Solution,” an article by Jeff Halper in the Middle East Research and Information Project, for his piece “Arab Bantustans”.
A series of online disputes between Fang and the MSNBC anchor regarding Matt Taibbi’s reporting in the ‘Twitter Files’ prompted the Intercept journalist to deep dive into Hasan’s past work, which resulted in the discovery of instances when Hasan had indulged in plagiarism.
In a heated on-air exchange last week, Taibbi and Hasan engaged in a contentious debate regarding Taibbi’s involvement in revealing confidential internal communications of Twitter in the ‘Twitter Files.’ While discussing Taibbi’s journalistic integrity, Hasan accused him of committing perjury during his testimony before Congress, prompting Fang to respond by defending Taibbi and rejecting Hasan’s accusation as baseless.
However, Hasan took to Twitter and launched a personal attack on Fang, alleging that he was “sucking up to Musk” to gain access to confidential information about Twitter’s internal affairs. At one point in time, Hasan also accused Fang of “Islamophobia” even though the journalist had not commented about his religion and had only spoken about his past work for Qatar-owned Al Jazeera to contend that it was disingenuous of him to free himself of the liability of his own work from the kinds of attacks he had flung at then-Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.
Despite himself working for a foreign organisation (Al Jazeera) that received funding from a foreign government, Hasan had accused Gabbard of being a foreign agent due to her campaign contributions from supporters of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
