Case study: Cabacungan vs. Rappler

I asked my current class in Media and Politics to analyze the plagiarism issue against Rappler started by my former Inquirer colleague Gil Cabacungan Jr. last April, as the subject of their first small-group case study. Their case study reports (submitted a month ago today, and returned the second week of May) proved to be well-researched, and their analysis solid and straightforward—so much so that I asked my students’ permission if I could post highlights of their reports in public. Take a look.

Bad blood

The instructions page for this exercise (posted on our Canvas course site soon after the controversy broke) read as follows:

On Friday, April 16, veteran journalist Gil Cabacungan Jr,  the head of the Abante News Group who also runs the Bilyonaryo and Politiko websites, accused Rappler of double plagiarism. He was immediately seconded by a former colleague of his, Dax Lucas of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. Many came to Rappler’s defense, including founder Maria Ressa.

At issue was two stories involving executive compensation in the Philippines, and a photo (or a layout) illustrating the stories. 

Part of the reason for the sudden and sharp outburst (which continued over the weekend) is known to industry insiders: There is bad blood between Cabacungan and his circle of journalists, and the journalists at Rappler. Hence, “politics IN media.”

But this controversy is instructive in more ways than one. 

INSTRUCTIONS.

1. Trace the controversy on Twitter, both forwards in time (that is, from last Friday until this week) and backwards (to as far back as you can possibly trace the “bad blood”).

2. Contextualize the controversy by doing additional research: in other social media platforms, in news websites, in published interviews with journalists, and other such sources.

3. Discuss the case with your group. 

Then prepare a one-page report (250 words or less): one report per group. In the report:

1. SUMMARIZE your group’s findings about the controversy.

2. DETERMINE, to the best of your group’s ability (and by consensus), whether plagiarism did in fact occur. Why or why not?

3. EVALUATE the controversy in terms of your group’s current understanding of the workings of the press.

Note that the summary, determination, and evaluation must all fit into one page.

The report (again, only one per group) must be filenamed as follows: Group Case Study 1, followed by the last names of the four group members, in alphabetical order.

It is due on Friday, April 23. I don’t want to get in the way of the weekend; at the same time, I want to give you as much time as possible. I hope that a deadline of 6pm strikes a fair balance.

[The instructions concluded with a reminder about which email address of mine to send the reports to, and then linked to or copied four “leads,” all of them from Twitter. I will reproduce them in a succeeding post.]

Crucial context

In a response I posted on our course site on May 9, I wrote:

Very good case study reports; much to learn from them. Let me highlight a few points:

The group of A, J, L, and A got off to a really good start with an excellent summary of the facts, written with flair and assurance:

In a flurry of incensed tweets, Gil Cabacungan Jr. accused Rappler of plagiarism on two counts—first on the content and second on the cover art of earlier Bilyonaryo articles. The bad blood between the two traces back several years prior, when Rappler was accused of falsely flagging a Politiko article as “fake news” (“Pahiya si Pinocchio,” 2019). To this day, the feud rages on, with Bilyonaryo publishing an article on April 17 that accuses Rappler of misconstruing ABS-CBN’s partnership with CNTV (“Dancing on ABS-CBN’s grave,” 2021). 

The group of R, K, J, and S also skillfully laid the predicate for their determination of the findings, adding crucial context:

Gil Cabacungan Jr., manager of news outlets like Abante, Politiko, and Bilyonaryo, is known for stirring heated online conversations about fellow news platform Rappler. Since 2019, Rappler and Cabacungan’s publications have gone back and forth criticizing one another. In January of that year, Rappler flagged a Politiko article on Leni Robredo for being fake news. Later in March, when Politiko published an article about [the] Midterm Election Polls, Rappler released another article denying its content. On both occasions, Cabacungan took to Twitter to defend his publications and express his indignation, calling Rappler out for being biased and dictating what stories journalists should write. 

I especially liked the opening paragraph written by the group of A, P, A, and R, because it provides both a “historical” and an “analytical” overview of the issue: It sketches in important background information, but also foregrounds the reason for Cabacungan’s apparent hostility:

The “bad blood” between Cabacungan and his circle of journalists, including Rappler, can be traced to a tweet posted back on February 11, 2019. To summarize the thread, Cabacungan questioned Facebook for appointing Rappler as one of their third-party fact-checkers to avoid the spread of fake news. He iterates that the issue of fake news is overplayed and that the appointment of fact-checkers is rigged, specifically biased against the Duterte administration. January of the same year, Rappler disproved an article published by Politiko (a website founded by Cabacungan himself) in a corresponding fact-check article. This caused Facebook to flag Politico’s articles as misleading, consequently minimizing their published content on the platform. To which, Politiko took a stand against the appeal process, refusing to be fact-checked by Rappler for this would mean that they are abiding by the rival’s journalistic standards.

All of the nine groups properly conducted their analysis, their determination of the issue, by defining plagiarism and then conducting their own tests to check for plagiarism. 

The group of L, C, M, and P had the strictest test: 

To thoroughly examine the plagiarism claims against Rappler, we have decided to use four different websites to determine if the latter has indeed committed plagiarism. All four websites have two text boxes where the contents of the two articles are to be placed which would then produce a similarity report between the two texts. 

1. Copyleaks.com found a 0.4% match between the two articles. 
2. Prepostseo.com found a 1% match from the Rappler article and a 6% match from the Bilyonaryo article. 
3. Check-plagiarism.com found a 1% match from the Rappler article and a 5% match from the Bilyonaryo article. 
4. Desklib.com found a 0% match from the Rappler article and a 1% match from the Bilyonaryo article. 

But the group of B, J, A, and B had the most comprehensive framework: 

Plagiarism is defined as “an act of fraud. It involves both stealing someone else’s work and lying about it afterward.” In the case of Bilyonaryo vs. Rappler, the main issue at hand was whether or not the Rappler team had copied the idea of ‘billionaires increased compensation.’ In this case study, three main types of plagiarism in journalism will be examined: plagiarism of information, of writing, and of ideas.

By and large, the groups reached their conclusions [NO PLAGIARISM] based on the available evidence and additional research. But R, K, J, and S included a diagram to (a) sum up the fact of the situation and (b) advance their determination of the issue. There is no need for diagrams like these in our case study reports, but I must say the diagram [generated by Digimind] was convenient and helpful. Take a look.