"But look, I was trying to write a seamless narrative, and to keep breaking it up with 'according to' qualifiers would have been extremely clunky. But in retrospect, I wish I’d done that."

Jill Abramson, caught and waffling.

Interviewed at Vox.

Sean Illing —Would you call any of this plagiarism?

Jill Abramson — No, I wouldn’t. This was completely unintentional. I mean, I have 70 pages of footnotes and I tried to credit everyone’s work as best I can. What we’re talking about here are sets of facts that I borrowed; obviously, the language is too close in some cases, but I’m not lifting original ideas. Again, I wish I had got the citation right, but it’s not an intentional theft or taking someone’s original ideas — it’s just the facts. But I’m owning it and I’m disappointed in myself for these mistakes.

Sean Illing — I grant that plagiarism is a fluid concept and it’s not always clear where the lines are.... [T]hose facts had to be collected and corroborated by the people you borrow from, so in that sense, you are stealing their labor, no?

Jill Abramson — I’m not going to get into a semantic argument about whether this fits some definition or not. I really think I’ve talked about this in full, and really would love to move on.
Sean Illing — ... Some of these passages that overlap with your source material have been tweaked just enough to avoid outright plagiarism, which suggests they were written self-consciously. Is that fair?

Jill Abramson — No, they were not.

Sean Illing — Maybe it would help if you could explain your process. How do you go about fact-checking and citing source material? How do you explain the multiple factual errors ...

Jill Abramson — I had a fact-checker and several people helping me with research, and I did many drafts of many chapters full of factual materials, and, you know, mistakes were made.

Wow. Funny that she came out with "Mistakes were made." I thought savvy people know that's a stock phrase that has come to mean the very thing it was invented to cover up — like "ethnic cleansing." Just as "ethnic cleansing" now just means genocide, "mistakes were made" means I fucked up.

"Mistakes were made" has its own Wikipedia article. (I love Wikipedia!)

The acknowledgement of "mistakes" is framed in an abstract sense, with no direct reference to who made the mistakes... The New York Times has called the phrase a "classic Washington linguistic construct." Political scientist William Schneider suggested that this usage be referred to as the "past exonerative" tense, and commentator William Safire has defined the phrase as "[a] passive-evasive way of acknowledging error while distancing the speaker from responsibility for it.".A commentator at NPR declared this expression to be "the king of non-apologies."....

U.S. President Richard Nixon used the phrase several times in reference to wrongdoings by his own electoral organization and presidential administration.

On May 1, 1973, White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler stated "I would apologize to the Post, and I would apologize to Mr. Woodward and Mr. Bernstein" (referring to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post). He continued, "We would all have to say that mistakes were made in terms of comments. I was overenthusiastic in my comments about the Post, particularly if you look at them in the context of developments that have taken place." The previous day, White House counsel John Dean and Nixon aides John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman had resigned, as the Watergate scandal progressed.

On January 27, 1987, U.S. President Ronald Reagan used the phrase in the State of the Union Address while discussing contacts with Iran in what came to be known as the arms-for-hostages scandal within the Iran-Contra affair. He said, in part: "And certainly it was not wrong to try to secure freedom for our citizens held in barbaric captivity. But we did not achieve what we wished, and serious mistakes were made in trying to do so. We will get to the bottom of this, and I will take whatever action is called for."...

On January 14, 2014, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, during his State of the State address, said "mistakes were clearly made" in reference to the George Washington Bridge lane closure scandal.

On May 12, 2015, potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush could not fully commit to an answer when asked if he would have voted to authorize the Iraq War in 2002, using the phrase "simple fact is, mistakes were made" on Sean Hannity's radio show. He was lambasted by both liberals and conservatives for his answer....

Wikipedia directs us to this unforgettable Matt Groening comic...

And I was not plagiarizing Matt Groening. That was fair use. And if you don't agree, then, in the scintillating words of Jill Abramson, I’m not going to get into a semantic argument about whether this fits some definition or no.

What can Jill Abramson do to atone? I'm going to say get Amy Klobuchar in here to throw a binder at her.