Geelan’s VicNews caught copying Judy Clements OAM story

VicNews has published a Judy Clements OAM story that, in our view, amounts to blatant plagiarism of the North Central Review / Whittlesea Review’s reporting.

The original North Central Review article, “Judy Clements earns OAM”, reported Ms Clements’ Medal of the Order of Australia for service to the Whittlesea community. It covered her 50 years with the Whittlesea Agricultural Society, advocacy for farming, work after Black Saturday, service to local history and cemetery organisations, and her City of Whittlesea Citizen of the Year recognition.

VicNews later published a story with the same headline and a structure that tracks the North Central Review piece almost paragraph-for-paragraph. The VicNews article does not visibly credit the North Central Review, link to the original article, or acknowledge that another local newsroom appears to have done the reporting work first.

That is not normal attribution. It is not ethical aggregation. It is another publisher’s local journalism being repackaged and misrepresented as VicNews content.

Why this is an ethical problem

Local journalism depends on trust, attribution and fair dealing. If a publication uses another outlet’s work, the honest thing is to name the source, link to it and make clear what has been independently verified. Passing off another newsroom’s story as your own misleads readers and disrespects the people who did the work.

The ethical concern is sharper because Ashley Geelan presents VicNews as a community news outlet. Community news should not mean taking a competitor’s work without credit. It should not mean hiding the source of a story while benefiting from another publisher’s reporting. And it should not mean pretending copied material is original journalism.

In our view, this raises serious questions about Geelan’s editorial standards, respect for other journalists, and willingness to be transparent with readers.

Unfortunately this is not the first time Ashley Geelan has been caught stealing an honest journalists work. This shamefully is a common occurrence.

Evidence preserved

Because copied material can be edited or removed after being called out, we preserved a PDF copy of the VicNews article as it appeared on 9 June 2026 at 04:39 UTC.

The issue is simple: Judy Clements’ OAM was a significant Whittlesea community story. The North Central Review covered it. VicNews then appears to have copied the work without proper credit. Readers deserve better than that, and so do the local journalists whose work appears to have been lifted.

Geelan Lies