MSNBC’s Hasan Faces Plagiarism Accusations After Run-In With Taibbi
Leftist lawmakers and reporters alike have assailed independent journalist Matt Taibbi for daring to help shed light on the controversial behavior of officials who were running Twitter prior to Elon Musk’s acquisition of the platform last year.
During congressional testimony related to the release of internal documents, collectively known as the “Twitter Files,” U.S. Del. Stacy Plaskett (D-VI) attempted to belittle Taibbi’s career by referring to him as a “so-called” journalist.
“Ranking Member Plaskett, I’m not a so-called journalist,” he shot back. “I’ve won the National Magazine Award, the I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism, and I’ve written 10 books, including four New York Times bestsellers.”
Taibbi has faced similar disparagement from those in his own industry, including from MSNBC personality Mehdi Hasan.
During an interview earlier this month, Hasan attempted to portray Taibbi as “incompetent” and attacked his reporting as filled with errors.
“Incompetent?” Taibbi responded. “Are you kidding me? You’re MSNBC. My God, you guys had six consecutive years of just screwups on the Russia story.”
In addition to eliciting backlash against his employer, Hasan’s rhetoric related to Taibbi has also sparked unwanted attention on a personal level.
Investigative journalist Lee Fang, who drew Hasan’s ire for defending Taibbi, said he decided to look into the MSNBC host’s background and found evidence of blatant plagiarism.
“Mehdi Hasan doesn’t just smear other journalists with lies and false accusations of bigotry to get ahead, he also has a history of stealing from them,” Fang asserted.
Along with a Substack post outlining his findings, he posted a side-by-side comparison of an article attributed to Hasan and one that was previously published.
Not only did Fang assert that Hasan engaged in “a clear violation of the simple ethics code outlined by the Society for Professional Journalists,” but he took aim at the MSNBC personality’s record misrepresenting the truth regarding Taibbi.
“Mehdi has engaged in many lies in this whole process,” he said. “The lying about never talking about the Hunter Biden laptop, he did. Lying about never reporting on the more scurrilous Russiagate allegations, he did. And then, the most serious allegation here is that Matt Taibbi lied under oath to Congress. “This is a claim that Mehdi has repeated over and over again. Again this is perjury, this is serious stuff. This is kind of very petty, personalized attacks that aren’t true.”
