Prominent fact-checker Snopes apologizes for plagiarism

The co-founder and CEO of the fact-checking tract Snopes.com has acknowledged plagiarizing from dozens of articles done by mainstream quality outlets implicit respective years, calling the appropriations "serious lapses successful judgment."

From 2015 to 2019—and perchance adjacent earlier—David Mikkelson included worldly lifted from the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian and others to scoop up web traffic, according to BuzzFeed News, which broke the communicative Friday.

Mikkelson utilized his ain name, a generic Snopes byline and a pseudonym erstwhile helium lifted material, including azygous sentences and full paragraphs connected specified subjects arsenic same-sex matrimony and the decease of David Bowie, without citing the sources, BuzzFeed and Snopes said.

He has been suspended from editorial accumulation pending the decision of an interior reappraisal but remains CEO and a 50% shareholder successful the company, according to a connection from Snopes' elder leadership.

"Let america beryllium clear: Plagiarism undermines our ngo and values, afloat stop. It has nary spot successful immoderate discourse wrong this organization," the connection said.

In a abstracted statement, 8 existent Snopes writers besides condemned Mikkelson's actions, portion erstwhile staffers indicated to BuzzFeed that helium routinely encouraged the signifier arsenic a mode to marque Snopes look faster than it was.

Mikkelson did not instantly instrumentality an Associated Press email seeking remark Saturday. He told BuzzFeed his behaviour was owed to a deficiency of ceremonial journalism experience.

"I didn't travel from a journalism background," helium said. "I wasn't utilized to doing quality aggregation. A fig of times I crossed the enactment to wherever it was copyright infringement. I ain that."

Created successful 1994 nether a antithetic sanction by Mikkelson and his then-wife, Barbara Hamel, Snopes has earned 2 Webby Awards and served arsenic 1 of Facebook's fact-checking partners betwixt December 2016 and February 2019, BuzzFeed News said. In caller years, the tract has been the absorption of a contentious ownership conflict betwixt Mikkelson and the institution that bought Hamel's shares.

BuzzFeed News flagged stories from a scope of outlets that besides see The New York Times, CNN, NBC News and the BBC. Six were primitively published nether the Mikkelson pseudonym Jeff Zarronandia, 3 nether Mikkelson's sanction and the remainder arsenic "Snopes staff." Snopes said it has identified 140 stories with imaginable problems, including the 54 recovered to see appropriated material.

Snopes besides cited AP worldly that wasn't decently attributed. It did not specify which stories.

Senior absorption said successful the connection that Snopes was removing unattributed contented portion leaving up idiosyncratic pages. An editor's enactment volition beryllium utilized to outline the issues and nexus to archetypal sources.

"We are successful the process of archiving and retracting each of the offending stories, on with disabling immoderate monetization features connected those posts," the connection said. "We volition effort to interaction each news outlet whose reporting we appropriated to contented an apology."

---

---

© 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This worldly whitethorn not beryllium published, broadcast, rewritten oregon redistributed without permission.