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The extent of Western media bias – and self-righteous arrogance when it comes to covering Russia – has reached a new low with the Berlin-based BNE Intellinews plagiarising Russia’s Pivot To Asia – then suggesting that this is reasonable behaviour.
The issue has arisen following our publication of this article, titled “Developing The Russian Far East as a Leading Asian Investment Destination”, published on July 5th and written by our correspondent Moulik Jahan.
Jahan is an experienced, professional journalist and analyst with work also published in ScandAsia, China Daily, and CGTN here and here among others. Unlike BNE Intellinews, Jahan is based in Asia.
That was followed by an article published here on July 14 by BNE Intellinews titled “Kremlin promoting the Far East as major investment frontier in Russia’s pivot to Asia” and credited to Ben Aris as the author.
Closer inspection however reveals that Aris (see the mugshot top left) leant extensively on our original piece yet attempted to mask his behaviour by changing the title. Plagiarism is defined as “the act of using another person’s ideas, words, or work and presenting them as your own without giving proper credit.” It is considered intellectual theft and a severe violation of academic, professional, and journalistic ethics.
In Aris’s case, it is also very lazy – taking someone else’s work, making some small amendments and passing the whole thing off as their own. One wonders how much of BNE Intellinews other articles – for which they charge up to $800 for access – have in fact been plagiarised in this way. Have BNE Intellinews subscribers actually been paying for other people’s uncredited, stolen work?
Uncovering BNE Intellinews Unethical Journalism
Today, tools such as Grammarly, Text Guard and Text Detect, amongst others, exist to analyse original works and check if someone has taken advantage of them. As a rule of thumb, text can be considered as plagiarism if it bears a 15% similarity or above to an original work.
In the BNE Intellinews article, a check revealed that the piece was similar to ours as follows:
- Direct Identical Wording 10–20%
- Close Paraphrasing 55–70%
- Same Ideas, Structure, Evidence and Sequence 80–90%
- Overall Dependence of BNE Intellinews Article on Russia’s Pivot To Asia Article: 75–85%
A deeper dive into the plagiarism analysis revealed the following:
- Mosaic Plagiarism: Very High
The BNE Intellinews article repeatedly rewrites sentences while preserving Russia’s Pivot To Asia : Sentence Logic, Order, Examples, Statistics, and Structure
- Structural Plagiarism: Extremely High
The overall outline is almost identical.
- Idea Plagiarism: Very High
The distinctive analytical framework appears to come from Russia’s Pivot To Asia. The BNE Intellinews article contributes comparatively little original analysis beyond condensing, rephrasing, and adding a few contextual details (references to the invasion of Ukraine, China’s share of Russian trade, and editorial skepticism about official investment figures).
Overall Conclusion
Analytical ideas appear to have been taken directly from the Russia’s Pivot To Asia article. From an editorial or academic perspective, while BNE Intellinews avoids extensive verbatim copying, it closely follows the Russia’s Pivot To Asia original structure, narrative progression, evidence selection, and analytical framework. This pattern is consistent with mosaic (patchwork) plagiarism and substantial unattributed adaptation (without giving proper attribution), rather than independent reporting on the same topic. Substantial unattributed adaptation is generally considered unethical in editorial and academic contexts.
The Russia’s Pivot To Asia Request and BNE Intellinews Response
Russia’s Pivot To Asia is flattered when other news and media organisations reproduce our work, as long as we are acknowledged as the source. That is reasonable. However, to take the entire article concept and then pass it off as original work is not OK. It is theft. To point this out, we emailed BNE Intelliginews Anton Paul, who describes himself as the Publisher.
We politely pointed out the resemblance of the two articles and requested that the piece be credited to us. Paul refused to do so and justified this by stating
“Tone: (The Russia’s Pivot To Asia) article reads like an investment promotion piece or a policy paper (with a highly optimistic outlook). The Intellinews article is a balanced, slightly sceptical piece of business journalism.”
This is problematic in several ways. Firstly, his analysis of our own work as ‘investment promotion’ and ‘policy paper’ is incorrect, and highly self-opinionated – he judges us. In fact, the article in question was extensively researched and provided fact checked government data. Paul’s retort is also not a valid excuse. Secondly, Paul appears to value scepticism over facts. That is an inherent weakness evident across much of Western Media – a belief that anything written showing Russia in any positive light must be treated sceptically. That however is a built-in bias manifesting as an acceptable standard over actual facts. It leads to White being portrayed as Black and can be highly dangerous – we can reference the Nazi’s for example here.
Paul went further by stating “Intellinews adds valuable context, such as mentioning the Sberbank stock ticker (MOEX: SBER), referencing the 2019 origin of the Indian credit line, and providing the exact percentage of Russia-China trade.”
However, in doing so, he admits that the article was based on our original work by ‘adding’ three simple sentences to our article. While those may be considered original, the adding to an existing piece still acknowledges that it was based upon our initial work. According to our AI plagiarism analysis, only 15% of the BNE Intellinews piece can be considered as original. Yet BNE Intellinews still refused to provide any source credit. That is theft. It is also highly disrespectful to the original author, who spent hours researching the original piece and should at the very least, be remunerated for his efforts. Instead, Ben Aris takes all the credit and is presumably paid for his ‘contribution’. That amounts to indirect financial theft from another journalist. At Russia’s Pivot To Asia, we pay our contributors, and will protect them from this type of abuse. At BNE Intellinews, it appears they steal content and ideas from them – and want to justify it as ‘legally compliant’.
Indeed, Paul finishes by stating that “The BNE Intellinews article is a distinct, original, and legally compliant piece of journalism.” However, neither plagiarism checks nor ethical journalism standards would agree, meaning Paul is either lying or is morally incompetent. As for the article being ‘legally compliant’ – whose laws apply here? European? Asian? Or someone’s else’s? It is not an excuse for ripping us off or not paying Asian-based joumalists for their hours of research effort.
Europe’s Colonial Superiority Manifested In Media
The malaise that appears to have afflicted Ben Aris, Anton Paul and indeed the entire team at BNE Intellinews has its roots in the old European colonial, almost racist mentality where European journalists, as well as politicians, take an attitude of self-righteousness over others considered as lesser beings. A ‘we know better than you’ and even ‘moral superiority’ creeps into their work. Russia’s Pivot To Asia doesn’t comment on the rights and wrongs of the Ukraine war (BNE Intellinews does) – we focus on the trade aspect of what we have called the largest single pivot to Asia by any country in the world. Unlike BNE Intellinews, we are actually based in Asia. But Ben Aris, based in Germany, can only write about the Far East (in the articles case, the Russian Far East) by plagiarising other people’s work who are actually based there. He is completely removed from the source but attempts to cover this up by pretending to be something he is not. It is a European colonial attitude of self pronounced intellectual superiority – and theft – over Asians. It is a position supported by the BNE Intellinews Publisher.
This has additional resonance when it comes to Russia, as the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has pointed out many times in his extensive bilateral meetings with Asian and African Presidents and Government Officials: a new multipolar world is needed to sweep away the old colonial mentalities. Increasingly, Asia and Africa are listening.
In this instance, BNE Intellinews are behind the curve. In stealing other people’s work, passing it off as their own and attempting to promote themselves as knowledgeable about Asia, their refusal to acknowledge their mistakes is outmoded, close to being racist and ultimately results in inaccurate media coverage. If that sounds familiar, welcome once again to old Europe. We hope the new Europe – and a more enlightened and less arrogant media – can eventually take root and flourish. Until it does – sub-standard journalism and dodgy ethics remain the preserve of what used to be an enlightened region. BNE Intellinews standards are regrettably symptomatic.
Meanwhile, a journalist in Asia, who worked for hours on an article, has had their work misappropriated without payment by a European publishing house writing about Russia. How ethical or honest is that?
