On April 4, 2012, I found out that an article I had written with friend and colleague of mine had been plagiarized by a major daily broadsheet. It was a profile piece we did for The GUIDON on basketball player and TV personality Chris Tiu. I chanced upon it one evening while going through my Twitter feed. I follow Chris Tiu, and he tweets what people have published about him as a way to aid circulation and help his fans get to know him better. He retweeted (image here) an entry found on this Tumblr account dedicated to him. At first I was curious to see someone else’s take on somebody I’ve written about before, but I was not prepared for the uncanny resemblances it had to mine.

Alex Santiago, my co-author and currently the Features section editor, and I consulted with The GUIDON’s Editor-in-Chief, Luther Aquino. Initially we decided that we’d take the traditional approach to writing the editors of the article in question (jpg here, print scan here, in case they try to take the site down). Detailed below are our efforts to reach out to The Manila Bulletin. We took the contact information from their website and did our best to reach them. The following are the contents of our original letter: (if it does not show below, click here to see it on Scribd.)

On April 7, Ms. Santiago sent emails to the addresses listed on the Manila Bulletin website. We only got delivery failure notifications saying that those addresses did not exist. The letter addressed to mbyouthsection@gmail.com was received, but we heard nothing back.

After numerous attempts to contact them via phone, email and finally fax, we finally set up a meeting a month later on May 10, Thursday.

Ms. Mendoza and Ms. Sionil met us on May 10 at the Manila Peninsula Hotel. The GUIDON was represented by myself, Ms. Santiago and Mr. Ruel De Vera, our publication’s moderator. Firstly, Ms. Sionil apologized for the delay in our meeting, claiming some communication never arrived or seen late, and they needed time as well to meet internally regarding how to approach the issue. Additionally, Ms. Mendoza also confirmed that the @mb.com.ph email addresses that we initially communicated to were no longer working.

Ms. Sionil produced several several documents, including a) the original MB article with the sentences in question highlighted, b) a purported original print transcript of Mr. Marasigan’s interview with Mr. Tiu with corresponding highlights, and c) a copy of The GUIDON’s article without any highlights.

Ms. Sionil told us that she and other colleagues had read the stories and there had been no noticeable plagiarism committed, also referring to the highlights in the transcript to support Mr. Marasigan’s story. According to her, what Mr. Marasigan wrote was based solely on the transcript and his personal knowledge of Mr. Tiu, adding that Mr. Tiu had given interviews over the years; his answers would probably not change and would certainly cause some similarities across different articles written about him.

I am disinclined to take as fact the transcribed copy of the interview that Ms. Sionil showed me, as it could very well be something edited post-facto to support Mr. Marasigan’s claim.

We were not contesting any factual claim about Mr. Tiu written by Mr. Marasigan. We reiterated, rather, that the problem lies in that Mr. Marasigan’s interpretation and relaying of that same information was practically the same as what we had produced at The GUIDON.

Ms. Mendoza told us she made an editorial decision to use the subhead “Jack of all trades,” saying her writers did not insert subheads and that one could not claim property of the expression. We agreed with her, and this has been dropped. The other four charges remain.

At this point I took her unmarked copy of The GUIDON’s article and highlighted the sentences in question and told Ms. Sionil to compare them to her writer’s article. Ms. Sionil said she had only seen the transcript and had not been able to closely compare the two, claiming as well that this was the first time that she had seen these similarities. I personally think this was irresponsible on her part because the sentences in question were already flagged in our initial letters; therefore we expected her to come to the meeting already acquainted with our complaint.

After comparing the stories again, Ms. Sionil said she needed more time to study them. We also agreed that Mr. Marasigan should be given time to come up with an official statement of his own to explain his account of events, due before the end of the following week, May 19.

For the record, Ms. Mendoza and Ms. Sionil both confirmed during two separate instances that Mr. Marasigan told them he had never seen the article published in The GUIDON.

Ms. Mendoza told us that she sympathized with us and wanted to put Mr. Marasigan on probation as soon as suspicion was raised. We said we were not demanding any reprimand Mr. Marasigan received from his superiors, though they may do so if they wish. We maintained our request for a public apology from the publication.

But Ms. Sionil said even if Mr. Marasigan would be found guilty of plagiarism, they would not grant our request for a formal apology from the publication. She said the editorial policy had always been to reprint any erroneous articles with made corrections, saying it was necessary to protect the reputation of The Manila Bulletin. At most, they said, Ms. Santiago and I could have some space in the republished byline.

We find that proposition particularly problematic for the following reasons:

a) Sharing a byline implies that we were part of the creative process and therefore consented to everything that appears in the article, which we most certainly did not.

b) It will be made to appear that the offense never happened, and

c) We think a public recognition of the offense committed is especially important. The offense was committed under a major publication in the public eye, essentially a betrayal of its readership’s trust, and that same readership has the right to know if it has been compromised.

Despite this, Ms. Sionil said her stance would not change. We warned them, however, it would be unfavorable for a national broadsheet to be perceived as unwilling to recognize or treat with a “small” campus publication.

Before parting, Ms. Sionil and Ms. Mendoza gave us their email addresses and numbers so we could follow up on a second meeting in June, before which we should have received Mr. Marasigan’s formal statement. Ms. Sionil in particular was adamant in bargaining for the May 19 deadline to give Mr. Marasigan more time. She gave her assurances that we would receive his statement.

I emailed them again on June 2, more than twenty days past the arranged date, asking for the same deliverables as well as suggesting they ask Mr. Marasigan for the raw audio file of the interview to authenticate of the printed copy they showed us during our May 9 meeting. Neither letter has gotten a response.

Half a year later, we’ve done everything reasonably possible to communicate with The Manila Bulletin and have been extremely generous with our patience. I personally don’t think it shouldn’t be this difficult when you consider that a) in this day and age communication channels are increasingly accessible, but more importantly b) the media are supposed to respond to their audience’s concerns, especially when the means to do so are readily available.

Given this insufferably slow course of action, I no longer wish to continue negotiations with them, fearing that they will continue to ignore us. Personally, it’s frustrating that the burden of continuing negotiations has fallen on us when it is their integrity that is being held in question. I’m also personally unsure of why there doesn’t seem to be any urgency to clean it up. Ms. Sionil’s slow response is telling of their professionalism as well.

I reiterate our claim in our initial letter that the sentences in question,

“refer to complex sentences that we think are unlikely to be coincidentally formed by Mr. Marasigan. While certain words have been omitted or replaced, the sentences are still very recognizable as part of The GUIDON’s article. [A] complete sentence [is also] found in Mr. Marasigan’s article in [its] entirety.” “In addition to this, we have observed that the structure of Mr. Marasigan’s article has a strong similarity to ours, especially how the story begins with comments on the author/s’ interview with Mr. Tiu, to his commitments to the national basketball team, his entrepreneurial and advocacy thrusts, and finally his personal life, in more or less the same order.“

Both sides agreed that the last thing we want is to take this incident to the public, but it seems that there is no private resolution in sight. Therefore, with the same energy and vigilance we use to hold our senators accountable for intellectual property rights violations, please help me hold The Manila Bulletin accountable and get a formal explanation and apology for this incident.

PS: As of this writing, Ms. Mendoza is no longer with The Manila Bulletin. Prior to her departure, it is Ms. Sionil, managing editor, who was the designated contact with MB.

Having graduated, I no longer have any official ties with The GUIDON. I am speaking independently and this post does not necessarily coincide with the views of The GUIDON.