Tag Archives: Ethics

CJ Werleman Can’t Be A Journalist – If Facts and Evidence Matter

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Image Credit: https://atheistsunited.org/

Image Credit: https://atheistsunited.org/

It’s been a devastatingly embarrassing six months for author and columnist CJ Werleman. Exposed for misrepresentation, serial plagiarism and probable sockpuppetry – and this was all before Sam Harris effortlessly spanked his ill-judged libellous accusations. Both Salon and Alternet dropped Werleman as a result, the latter completely removing his articles from their archives altogether. The only platform still willing to publish him is Middle East Eye. It’s a self-immolation that is painful to look at – yet I can’t seem to help myself.

You’d imagine this period would have been a good time for Werleman to put down the spade and contemplate where his career was heading. He appears to have dropped the spade and upgraded to a JCB digger however, committed to hacking his way downward – ethically.

I’d like to provide you with a few examples that distinguish a Journalist from a Propagandist.

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Is CJ Werleman A Plagiarist?

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Image Taken From https://www.facebook.com/pages/CJ-Werleman/207324500344

Image Taken From https://www.facebook.com/pages/CJ-Werleman/207324500344

Update: 22/10/2014 – Soon after publishing this article on 17/10/2014, the charges of plagiarism contained within were confirmed to be accurate, revealing CJ Werleman to be a serial plagiarist. As a result, many new developments have occurred – including the discovery of 14 additional instances of plagiarism and a number of Werleman’s publishing outlets taking action against him. I have now added additional footnotes to highlight these developments.

I recently documented a number of concerns regarding the unpleasant behaviour of ‘Author’ and ‘Social Commentator’ CJ Werleman in my article: ‘CJ Werleman: Misrepresentation, Dubious Ethics and Unoriginal Hackery’. Expressed within that article and reproduced below are my thoughts on some of Werleman’s published writing:

‘[Werleman] is simply regurgitating past hack jobs and slapping sensationalist headlines on them’

‘…you’ve already heard this elsewhere, many times before, many years ago.’

‘Also, what he has cobbled together in his attack on Harris has already been written by others many years ago’

I attributed his imitative output to an absence of original thought rather than something altogether more cynical. But it’s now possible my feeling of ‘having read this all before’ was a symptom of literally having read some of this before.

The above article mentions Dr. Peter Boghossian (@PeterBoghossian), which subsequently prompted a conversation between us. During our conversation, Dr. Boghossian called attention to some things he’d identified in CJ Werleman’s writing that I hadn’t previously considered, and so I decided to conduct an independent investigation to determine whether or not CJ Werleman is guilty of actual plagiarism. (Parts of Dr. Boghossian’s letter have been reprinted here with his permission.)

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