‘Fact checker’ Snopes co-founder discovered plagiarising over 50 articles

Snopes, the left-leaning fact-checking web site, has been underneath the scanner after a Buzzfeed investigation revealed that the web site’s co-founder David Mikkelson wrote over 50 articles containing plagiarised content material between 2015 and 2019. Snopes was based in 1995 by Mikkelson and has been Facebook’s fact-checking accomplice between December 2016 to February 2019.
An article authored by correspondent Dean Sterling Jones and printed by Buzzfeed News on Friday (August 13) uncovered how Mikkelson plagiarised articles utilizing each his actual title, Snopes byline, and a pseudonym known as Jeff Zarronandia. The Snopes co-founder printed articles on the ‘fact-checking site’ by copying textual content straight from information sources similar to BBC, NBC, CNN, and New York Times. At instances, he would copy complete paragraphs and copied a whole article in a single case. Buzzfeed News reported that the ‘act of plagiarism’ by David Mikkelson was intentional and a well-thought-out technique.
According to former Managing Editor of Snopes, Broke Binkowski, he would copy textual content straight from different information portals to provide the misunderstanding that the location was quick at publishing stories and thus ‘scoop up traffic’. Binkowski emphasised, “That was his massive search engine optimisation/pace secret…He would instruct us to repeat textual content from different websites, put up them verbatim in order that it appeared like we had been quick and will scoop up site visitors, after which change the story in actual time. She is now related to one other fact-checking web site known as, ‘Truth or Fiction.’
Screengrab of the Buzzfeed article by Dean Sterling Jones
The ‘real reason’ behind plagiarising articles from different information sources
Interestingly, Buzzfeed News discovered that David Mikkelson had confessed about his unethical plagiarism methods in two emails from 2014 and 2015 and a Slack message from 2016. In the contentious emails, he directed his employees members to “pop over to one of our competitor sites (urbanlegends.com or hoaxslayer.com), pick something out that they’ve recently published that we haven’t covered and rewrite it just enough to avoid copyright infringement.” A 12 months later in 2016, he defined the target behind his unprofessional conduct in a Slack message.
Screengrab of the plagiarised articles by Mikkelson by way of Buzzfeed News
“Usually when a hot real news story breaks (such as a celebrity death), I just find a wire service or other news story about it and publish it on the site verbatim to quickly get a page up. Once that’s done, then I quickly start editing the page to reword it and add material from other sources to make it not plagiarized,” he stated. This follow of shortly rewriting the textual content after overtly copying it from different information websites violate a number of requirements of moral journalism. And the Buzzfeed investigation revealed how Mikkelson typically forgot to make adjustments.
Screengrab of the plagiarised articles by Mikkelson by way of Buzzfeed News
54 plagiarised articles by the co-founder of Snopes retracted
“After inquiries from BuzzFeed News, Snopes conducted an internal review and confirmed that under a pseudonym, the Snopes byline, and his own name, Mikkelson wrote and published 54 articles with plagiarized material. The articles include such topics as same-sex marriage licenses and the death of musician David Bowie,” Buzzfeed emphasised.
Snopes’ Managing Editor Doreen Marchionni and Vinny Green confirmed the event and stated that Mikkelson has been suspended from his ‘editorial duties’ till the investigation is accomplished. Marchionni and Green have additionally praised Buzzfeed for its ‘dogged, watchdog journalism.’ At the identical time, 8 employees members at Snopes condemned the ‘poor journalistic practices’ of the location’s co-founder. Based on its inputs, an inside audit by Snopes discovered that about 54 articles authored by Mikkelson contained plagiarised content material and have been retracted from the location.
Screengrab of a retracted article from the Snopes web siteSnopes’ co-founder used a pseudonym and withheld data from readers
Mikkelson typically operated utilizing the pseudonym of Jeff Zarronadia. Ex-Managing Editor of Snopes, Brooke Binkowski, knowledgeable, “He used to write about topics he knew would get him hate mail under that assumed name. Plus it made it appear he had more staff than he had.” However, Snopes knowingly withheld the data from its readers that the account of Jeff Zarronadia belonged to the location’s co-founder.
In his defence, Mikkelson instructed Buzzfeed News, “It was kind of a stress-relief thing (after) spending 20 years seeing people trying to discredit our work by just making stuff up about us. Let’s have some fun and watch these people vent their spleen inventing reasons why this nonexistent persona is biased.” The bio of his pseudonym claimed that he had gained the Pulitzer Prize in ‘numismatics.’
Despite plagiarism and unethical journalistic practices, Mikkelson will proceed to stay the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Snopes. He owns about 50% of the Snopes Media Group.
Statement by David Mikkelson following the Buzzfeed expose
In a press release, David Mikkelson stated, “The results of our internal audit confirmed that I engaged in multiple serious copyright violations of content that Snopes didn’t have rights to use. There is no excuse for my serious lapses in judgment. I am sorry. I have given full authority to our managing editor, Doreen Marchionni, to take any measures needed to address these issues. While I can’t change the past, I couldn’t be prouder of how Snopes has evolved since then.”
“Snopes has grown beyond our roots as a ‘one-man band’ website into a newsroom of dedicated, professional journalists who serve the public with trustworthy information. Thanks to their efforts, Snopes has published original reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic, the recent elections, Russian disinformation efforts and so much more. The last thing I ever wanted was to have my mistakes detract from their excellent work, and I’m doing everything I can to make it right,” he concluded.