Row escalates over ‘defamatory’ articles accusing billionaire’s wife of plagiarism
James Warrington
James Warrington
Mon, January 15, 2024
Bill Ackman is threatening to sue Axel Springer over stories published by Business Insider - Richard Drew/AP
US hedge fund tycoon Bill Ackman has threatened to sue Axel Springer as a plagiarism row at the German publishing giant intensifies.
The billionaire has said he will file a formal complaint against Axel Springer after Business Insider published stories accusing his wife, Neri Oxman, of copying large passages of her dissertation from Wikipedia and other academics.
In a post on Twitter, Mr Ackman added: “By complaint I mean lawsuit, to be clear.”
The legal threat marks an escalation of a public row between Axel Springer and Mr Ackman, who has attacked the publisher over what he described as “false claims and defamation”.
Ms Oxman, a high-profile American-Israeli academic, has admitted that she had failed to properly credit sources in part of her dissertation and apologised for the errors.
Ms Oxman has already admitted that she failed to properly credit sources in part of her dissertation - Steven Ferdman/Getty Images North America
Nevertheless, Mr Ackman has questioned the motivations and processes behind Business Insider’s reporting.
Axel Springer, which also owns Politico as well as the Bild and Die Welt newspapers, last week launched an investigation into the stories amid concerns they could be viewed as anti-Semitic.
In a note to staff on Sunday, Barbara Peng, chief executive of Business Insider, said the review had found “no unfair bias or personal, political, and/or religious motivation in the pursuit of the stories”.
She added: “The process we went through to report, edit, and review the stories was sound, as was the timing … The stories are accurate and the facts well documented.”
A spokesman for Axel Springer declined to comment on the legal threat, but said: “We stand by Business Insider and its newsroom.”
The findings have failed to placate Mr Ackman, who said the company had “tripled down on their false claims and defamation”.
He added: “I would not rely on the self-adjudicated claims of Business Insider and/or Axel Springer to get an understanding of the truth.”
The stories about Ms Oxman came after Mr Ackman, who is chief executive of Pershing Square Capital Management, led calls to oust Harvard President Claudine Gay over accusations of plagiarism.
Mr Ackman last year led calls to oust Harvard President Claudine Gay over accusations of plagiarism - Mark Schiefelbein/AP
After Ms Gay stepped down earlier this month she conceded that “some material duplicated other scholars’ language, without proper attribution” but denied claiming credit for other people’s work.
In a series of lengthy posts on social media, the tycoon said his wife was given only 90 minutes to respond to the allegations against her.
He has also tried to involve private equity firm KKR, Axel Springer’s biggest shareholder, in the row. In one post, he wrote: “How can KKR be the ultimate controlling shareholder of a totally unethical and sleazy media company?”
KKR declined to comment.
The row has created a headache for Berlin-based Axel Springer, which has an explicitly pro-Israel stance in its reporting. Employees in Germany are required to sign a mission statement asserting support for Israel’s right to exist.
While staff at Politico and Business Insider are not required to sign such a declaration, Axel Springer chief executive Mathias Döpfner has said he expects all staff to adhere to the company’s values.
Stephanie Kaloi
Sun, January 14, 2024
On Jan. 7, MIT academic and entrepreneur Neri Oxman was accused of plagiarism in reporting from Business Insider. The story broke after former Harvard president Claudine Gay resigned from her post due to similar accusations — Oxman’s husband Bill Ackman was among those who led the march that resulted in Gay’s ousting. On Sunday, Business Insider CEO Barbara Peng defended both the accuracy and the motivations behind the outlet’s investigation.
In a letter published on Insider’s site, Peng defended the outlet against charges that the investigation into Oxman was unjust. In a series of bullet points, she wrote, “There was no unfair bias or personal, political, and/or religious motivation in the pursuit of the stories.”
“The stories were newsworthy and Neri Oxman, who has a public profile as a prominent intellectual and has been a subject of and participant in media coverage, is a fair subject,” Peng continued.
“The process we went through to report, edit, and review the stories was sound, as was the timing. Through their representative, Oxman and Ackman responded that they had made the decision not to comment.”
Peng added, “The stories are accurate and the facts well documented.”
Billionaire Ackman later responded on social media, writing, “Business Insider is toast. You will hear from us in a few weeks. It will look something like this: At My Signal, Unleash Hell.”
He linked to a clip from the film “Gladiator” include that quote.
Ackman had taken issue with the results of Business Insider’s investigation, which found that Oxman “stole sentences and whole paragraphs from Wikipedia, other scholars, and technical documents in her academic writing.” In a lengthy tweet posted on Jan. 9, Ackman wrote that he “personally disputed the facts (as well as the reporting process) of Business Insider’s stories initially in an approximately one-hour conversation with a director of Business Insider on Sunday morning beginning at 10:01am.”
Peng’s entire letter reads:
“We are a journalism organization with high standards and a commitment to truth and fairness. Regarding the recent reporting on Neri Oxman, we feel it’s important to share the following:
There was no unfair bias or personal, political, and/or religious motivation in the pursuit of the stories.
The stories were newsworthy and Neri Oxman, who has a public profile as a prominent intellectual and has been a subject of and participant in media coverage, is a fair subject.
The process we went through to report, edit, and review the stories was sound, as was the timing. Through their representative, Oxman and Ackman responded that they had made the decision not to comment.
The stories are accurate and the facts well documented.
Business Insider supports and empowers our journalists to share newsworthy, factual stories with our readers, and we do so with editorial independence.
We stand by our newsroom and our reporting, which will continue onward.
Barbara Peng
CEO, Business Insider“
This story has been updated.
TheWrap.
Following review, Business Insider stands by reports on wife of ex-Harvard president's critic
DAVID BAUDER
Sun, January 14, 2024 at 2:30 PM MST·3 min read
Rev. Al Sharpton, second from left, joins with protesters outside the office of hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman, who has donated millions to Harvard, to protest his campaign against diversity, equity, and inclusion Thursday, Jan. 4, 2024, in New York. Harvard University President Claudine Gay resigned Tuesday amid plagiarism accusations and criticism over testimony at a congressional hearing where she was unable to say unequivocally that calls on campus for the genocide of Jews would violate the school's conduct policy. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
NEW YORK (AP) — Business Insider’s top executive and parent company said Sunday they were satisfied with the fairness and accuracy of stories that made plagiarism accusations against a former MIT professor who is married to a prominent critic of former Harvard President Claudine Gay.
“We stand by Business Insider and its newsroom,” said a spokesman for Axel Springer, the German media company that owns the publication.
The company had said it would look into the stories about Neri Oxman, a prominent designer, following complaints by her husband, Bill Ackman, a Harvard graduate and CEO of the Pershing Square investment firm. He publicly campaigned against Gay, who resigned earlier this month following criticism of her answers at a congressional hearing on antisemitism and charges that her academic writing contained examples of improperly credited work.
With its stories, Business Insider raised both the idea of hypocrisy and the possibility that academic dishonesty is widespread, even among the nation's most prominent scholars.
Ackman's response, and the pressure that a well-connected person placed on the corporate owners of a journalism outlet, raised questions about the outlet's independence.
Business Insider and Axel Springer's "liability just goes up and up and up,” Ackman said Sunday in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “This is what they consider fair, accurate and well-documented reporting with appropriate timing. Incredible.”
Business Insider's first article, on Jan. 4, noted that Ackman had seized on revelations about Gay's work to back his efforts against her — but that the organization's journalists “found a similar pattern of plagiarism" by Oxman. A second piece, published the next day, said Oxman had stolen sentences and paragraphs from Wikipedia, fellow scholars and technical documents in a 2010 doctoral dissertation at M.I.T.
Ackman complained that it was a low blow to attack someone's family in such a manner and said Business Insider reporters gave him less than two hours to respond to the accusations. He suggested an editor there was an anti-Zionist. Oxman was born in Israel.
The business leader reached out in protest to board members at both Business Insider and Axel Springer. That led to Axel Springer telling The New York Times that questions had been raised about the motivation behind the articles and the reporting process, and the company promised to conduct a review.
On Sunday, Business Insider CEO Barbara Peng issued a statement saying “there was no unfair bias or personal, political and/or religious motivation in pursuit of the story.”
Peng said the stories were newsworthy and that Oxman, with a public profile as a prominent intellectual, was fair game as a subject. The stories were “accurate and the facts well-documented,” Peng said.
“Business Insider supports and empowers our journalists to share newsworthy, factual stories with our readers, and we do so with editorial independence,” Peng wrote.
Business Insider would not say who conducted the review of its work.
Ackman said his wife admitted to four missing quotation marks and one missed footnote in a 330-page dissertation. He said the articles could have “literally killed” his wife if not for the support of her family and friends.
“She has suffered severe emotional harm,” he wrote on X, “and as an introvert, it has been very, very difficult for her to make it through each day.”
For her part, Gay wrote in the Times that those who campaigned to have her ousted “often trafficked in lies and ad hominem insults, not reasoned arguments.” Harvard's first Black president said she was the subject of death threats and had “been called the N-word more times than I care to count.”
There was no immediate comment Sunday from Nicholas Carlson, Business Insider's global editor in chief. In a memo to his staff last weekend that was reported by The Washington Post, Carlson said he made the call to publish both of the stories and that he knew the process of preparing them was sound.
Business Insider stands by reporting on Bill Ackman’s wife, Neri Oxman, says stories ‘are accurate’ with ‘no unfair bias’
Oliver Darcy, CNN
Sun, January 14, 2024
Business Insider and its parent company, Axel Springer, said Sunday that they stood by the outlet’s reporting that Neri Oxman, a prominent former professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the wife of billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, had plagiarized in her doctoral dissertation.
In a note Sunday morning, Barbara Peng, chief executive of Business Insider, said the outlet had spent several days reviewing its reporting after public complaints made by Ackman. The review, Peng said, found that “there was no unfair bias” and that the “process we went through to report, edit, and review the stories was sound.”
Peng said a pair of stories the outlet published earlier this month reporting that Oxman had plagiarized other scholars’ work and lifted more than a dozen sections from Wikipedia “are accurate.” She described Oxman as a “fair subject” and “has a public profile as a prominent intellectual and has been a subject of and participant in media coverage,” rebutting Ackman’s complaints that she should have been immune to coverage tied to Ackman’s recent activism.
“Business Insider supports and empowers our journalists to share newsworthy, factual stories with our readers, and we do so with editorial independence,” Peng wrote. “We stand by our newsroom and our reporting, which will continue onward.”
In the wake of the reporting, Oxman acknowledged she had failed to properly cite some of her work. “I regret and apologize for these errors,” she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. Ackman has since disputed the veracity of Business Insider’s reporting and said Oxman has hired an attorney. A representative for Ackman declined to comment to CNN on Sunday, but on X, Ackman threatened the publication: “Business Insider is toast. You will hear from us in a few weeks. It will look something like this: At My Signal, Unleash Hell.”
Business Insider announced last week that Axel Springer had compelled a review of its reporting alleging that Oxman had plagiarized her work, eliciting questions and criticism of the parent company’s decision.
The stories had been published after Ackman helped spearhead a campaign to oust Claudine Gay as Harvard University’s president. Ackman applied relentless pressure on Harvard to remove Gay, initially criticizing the academic for the school’s response to anti-Semitism and then later for plagiarism, the latter of which ultimately led to her removal.
A spokesperson for Axel Springer told CNN on Sunday that the German publishing powerhouse was satisfied with the review Business Insider had completed.
“We stand by Business Insider and its newsroom,” the spokesperson said.
The days-long review had alarmed staffers at Business Insider, who were troubled about the precedent such a review might set, particularly on a punchy newsroom known for aggressively reporting on the wealthy and powerful. One staffer told CNN earlier this week that journalists at the outlet were perturbed about “the chilling effect” that Axel Springer’s move could have on the organization.
This story has been updated with additional information.
CNN.com
Axel Springer Stands by Business Insider Reporting on Bill Ackman’s Wife
Alexandra Bruell
Sun, January 14, 2024
Neri Oxman is a designer and former MIT professor. - Gary He for The Wall Street Journal
Business Insider owner Axel Springer said it stands by the publication after reviewing the reporting process behind stories that alleged plagiarism by Neri Oxman , the designer and former Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who is married to hedge-fund billionaire Bill Ackman.
The German media company said last week it would review the process and motivations behind the recent BI articles . The review came amid complaints from Ackman, in a series of posts on X, about the publication’s reporting tactics.
Ackman’s concerns included the notion that anti-Zionism was at play in the reporting process, which people at Business Insider rejected.
“We stand by Business Insider and its newsroom,” Axel Springer said in a statement.
“There was no unfair bias or personal, political, and/or religious motivation in the pursuit of the stories,” Business Insider CEO Barbara Peng said in an internal memo. “The stories were newsworthy and Neri Oxman, who has a public profile as a prominent intellectual and has been a subject of and participant in media coverage, is a fair subject.”
Oxman, who is Israeli, was a professor at MIT’s Media Lab for about a decade. BI’s reporting on her began with a story that said she didn’t use quotation marks when quoting another work in several instances, and paraphrased from a book without a citation. Oxman apologized for those occurrences in a post on X.
Business Insider owner Axel Springer said in a statement, ‘We stand by Business Insider and its newsroom.’ - Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg News
A follow-up BI story went deeper, claiming that Oxman had lifted several passages from Wikipedia in her 2010 MIT doctoral dissertation, without citation.
In his posts on X, Ackman said the BI reporting was in retaliation for his role in generating a wave of scrutiny of Harvard University and its leadership. Ackman was one of the earliest critics of how Harvard University’s leadership handled students’ response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, and allegations of plagiarism against Claudine Gay, who resigned as the university’s president earlier this month.
Ackman said BI gave his communications representative less than two hours to provide a comment for the follow-up article after sending an email with detailed examples of alleged plagiarism by Oxman.
“Business Insider’s and [Axel Springer’s] liability just goes up and up and up,” Ackman posted on X in response to Axel Springer’s statement defending the publication and its reporting. “This is what they consider fair, sound, accurate and well documented reporting with appropriate timing.”
In a post last week that recounts his communication with leadership at Axel Springer, he made several demands, including that the publication remove stories alleging plagiarism by his wife, create a settlement fund “to compensate all those who have been victimized by BI,” and severely punish those responsible for the reporting.
“The process we went through to report, edit, and review the stories was sound, as was the timing,” Peng said in the memo. “The stories are accurate and the facts well documented.”
Axel Springer’s review had dismayed BI staffers, from senior editors to rank-and-file journalists, who thought the parent company shouldn’t have gotten involved, the Journal previously reported.
Write to Alexandra Bruell at alexandra.bruell@wsj.com
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