Tito Sotto Plagiarism Controversy

Submission 29,363

Overview

The Tito Sotto Plagiarism Controversy refers to the political scandal surrounding Filipino actor-turned-senator Tito Sotto, who has been accused of plagiarizing his speeches in verbatim from a blog post written by American home economist columnist Sarah Pope and U.S. senator Robert Kennedy's 1966 address to South Africans.

Background

On August 13th, 2012, the Philippines' Senate majority leader Tito Sotto addressed the assembly in a passionate speech against the legislation of Reproductive Health Bill, which would guarantee universal access to methods on birth-control, sexual education and maternal care.

Two days later on August 15th, Philippine blogs^[4]^[6]^[7] and news sites^[8] as well as international news agencies^[5] reported that Sotto's address contained excerpts that had been copied in verbatim from online sources, including a blog post written by Healthy Home Economist^[1] columnist Sarah Pope, a New York University newsletter^[2] written by birth-control advocate Margaret Sanger and another column for Feminists for Choice^[3] written by Janice Formichella.

The Politician

Vicente "Tito" Castelo Sotto III^[9] (born August 24, 1948) is an actor, musician, television personality, and politician in the Philippines. Prior to entering politics in 1988 as the elected mayor of Quezon City, Sotto made himself a household name as the co-host of noontime show Eat Bulaga, the longest running Philippine television program in history, along with his brother Vic Sotto and Joey de Leon.

Notable Developments

The news reports quickly spread across the blogosphere, Twitter and Facebook, where further evidence supporting the plagiarism accusation continued to surface. On August 16th, Philippine investigative journalist Raissa Robles^[4] posted a blog article "Did Senator Sotto copy from 5 bloggers" in which he connected four additional blog articles to Sotto's plagiarism of his speech.

Online Reaction

Shortly after the speech's original sources were unveiled, lulz ensued on Facebook and Twitter where image macros criticizing Senator Sotto began pouring in.

Soon, photoshopped images of Sotto (shown below) and demeaning nicknames like "bobo" (a derogatory Tagalog term for "dimwit" or "dumbass") began to spread on Twitter, as well as various slang terms like "sinotto", "nang-sotto" and "nanotto," which became synonymous with copy-pasting content without attribution.

Official Responses

Following the eruption of the scandal, Sotto responded by asserting that he was quoting Natasha Campbell-McBride who was referenced in Sarah Pope's blog post. However, Sotto's statement was met by skeptical remarks from the internet users, some of whom even questioned Campbell-McBride's credibility^[7] within the scientific community, citing her belief in connection between autism and gut bacteria. Upon learning of the controversy, Sarah Pope confirmed the accusations and decried Sotto's denial of wrongdoing on August 16th in another blog entry. Pope later remarked in an interview on the Philippine newscast The World Tonight:

"He is acting as though he's above the law, that he is above copyright law, that he can do whatever he wants, he can step on whoever he wants, to get his agenda through the Philippine legislature. That's just wrong, that's very poor behavior. I hope the Filipino people great note of this behavior and subsequent denial on his bad behavior on the part of Senator Sotto. Think about this when they go to the election booths when he's up for reelection."

The following day on August 17th, Sotto reasserted his defense in the news interviews by saying that he has since disclosed the original sources for attribution and citing the constitutional protection which provides immunity to any legislator from being held liable for his or her speech outside of the Congress.

"I made a blanket disclosure. I mentioned beforehand my attributions, that I had many sources (of information in my speech) so I have admitted that. I have made a disclosure, so what’s their problem with that? They probably thought I’m trying to pass myself off as knowledgeable (on the subject) when in fact I’m not, supposedly, Where is the plagiarism there? They think that’s plagiarism. So come on, sue me."

Several academics from top universities in the Philippines have also expressed their intent on filing a joint complaint alongside Sarah Pope and a few other concerned bloggers.^[9]

Robert Kennedy's Speech

The issue further escalated in September when it was found out by Twitter user Michel Eldiy that Sotto's closing speech was taken verbatim (albeit merely translated in Tagalog) from a speech made by Robert F. Kennedy in 1966:

Kerry Kennedy, daughter of the late senator, later issued a strongly-worded statement^[10], bitterly chastising Sotto for "his unethical, unsanctioned theft of Robert Kennedy's intellectual property and the intellectual property of all those whose work he has plagiarized." The statement was signed by Ms. Kennedy under the letterhead of the of the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights based in New York, of which she is the founder and current president.

Despite this Sotto still insisted on not making a public apology^[11], denying any allegations of plagiarism and citing his parliamentary immunity over the issue.