Caixin Weekly editor accuses Wall Street Journal of ‘shameless’ plagiarism over Chinese corruption probe story
The Wall Street Journal’s story on probe
A senior member of the editorial team at independent news digest Caixin Weekly has accused the Wall Street Journal of plagiarism over a story about a corruption probe into Chinese oil interests in Canada.
Gao Yu, the magazine’s deputy editor, said in a post on Weibo that the News Corp-owned newspaper had been “shameless” in its reporting of a story about a corruption investigation that has spread to Canada.
Yu said in the post that the Journal’s story on Monday of this week used “all the important facts” from Caixin’s articles of two weeks prior without attributing or referencing Caixin as the source.
Gao Yu’s post on Weibo
“Caixin has started to investigate the business files and documents between China National Petroleum and different companies in Canada,” he wrote, listing other companies under investigation by Caixin that had appeared in the WSJ’s report.
Caixin ran its story on the investigation on 21 July, the facts Yu suggests were lifted after translating the story from Chinese into English.
“All the information gathered from the interviewees has been used by WSJ,” he wrote.
“Nearly all the main factors from the article in WSJ were from our report two weeks ago,” referring to the companies called into question that feature in both stories, which are Canadian subsidiaries of China National Petroleum Corp.
“It is reasonable to say this is total plagiarism, especially since there was no mention or reference of the Caixin report in the whole WSJ article,” he said.
Caixin Weekly’s story on corruption probe
The WSJ story is bylined to reporters Chester Dawson in Calgary, Alistair MacDonald in Toronto and Brian Spegele in Beijing.
The editor-in-chief of Caixin, Hu Shuli, has since responded to Yu’s post, suggesting that the Journal’s writers in Calgary and Toronto might not have seen Caixin’s reportage, as his publication’s stories were “much more informative.”
A translation of her post reads: “We need to understand this a bit, did the WSJ’s Canada reporter see the relevant Caixin article? Our coverage was much more informative. Same event, world-class attention.”
The Wall Street Journal’s publisher, News Corp-owned Dow Jones, has yet to respond to Mumbrella’s request for comment.
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