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Hassan Nisars Potential Plagiarism

By Muhammad Zubair (m.zubair.engr@gmail.com)

Hassan Nisar, a famous Columnist of Dunya News, published his column on 13th October, 2012 which
was actually copied and translated (pasted) almost in full from *Rakesh Krishnan Simhas blog post.

According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, to "plagiarize" means


to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own
to use (another's production) without crediting the source
to commit literary theft
to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source.
In other words, plagiarism is an act of fraud. It involves both stealing someone else's work and lying about
it afterward.

The Pew Research Center is an American think tank organization based in Washington, D.C. The Pew
Research Centers Global Attitudes Project conducts public opinion surveys around the world on a broad
array of subjects ranging from peoples assessments of their own lives to their views about the current
state of the world and important issues of the day. On June 27, 2012, Pew Research Centers Global
Attitudes Project published a survey on Pakistani public opinion about US, titled as Pakistani Public
Opinion Ever More Critical of U.S. Based on this survey, Rakesh Krishnan Simha, a New Zealand-
based writer and a columnist for Russia & India Report , published his comments on this survey in a blog
post titled Why Muslims and Chinese hate Pakistan on July 3, 2012.

On October 13, 2012, Hassan Nisar, a columnist for Dunya News, published his Urdu column titled
Search in own (Urdu: khood apni talash main). In this column, Hassan Nisar referred to Pew Research
Centers survey of June 27, 2012 about Pakistan and its international image. He gave the impression that
he is mentioning the results of that survey in this column, but in reality, he just translated Simhas blog
post Why Muslims and Chinese hate Pakistan from English to Urdu in full without proper citation. In
short, Hassan Nisar plagiarized the work of Simha without any reference or citation.

It is worthwhile to mention that the original survey had only statistical results on different questions
asked by different people in 21 countries. Simha analyzed this survey and provided his own comments on
this survey in his blog post Why Muslims and Chinese hate Pakistan. Hassan Nisar did translation of
Simhas blog postand portrayed it as the original survey by Pew Research Center. Hassan Nisar did not
bother to mention in his column that he copied this information word by word from Simhas blog post
instead of the original survey.

In short Hassan Nisar, in his column, actually copied and translated (pasted) entire paragraphs from
Rakesh Krishnan Simhas blog post and wrongly cited them as the results of survey by Pew Research
Center.

The Columnists and Writers who respect the values of a free media have a responsibility to confront and
expose unethical behavior in their profession. If they do not do so, they enable a press dominated by fraud
and dishonesty. My motivation in speaking out against Hassan Nisar is not to humiliate him but to protect
the columnists, writers, editors, and readers who would be hurt if he were allowed to continue with his
lies.

*Rakesh Krishnan Simha is a New Zealand-based writer and a columnist for Russia Behind the Headlines. He has previously worked
with Businessworld, India Today and Hindustan Times, and was news editor with the Financial Express.

Author is a PhD scholar at Polytechnic of Turin, Italy.

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