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NEW YORK — The co-founder and CEO of fact-checking site Snopes.com acknowledged plagiarism from dozens of articles by mainstream news outlets over the course of several years, calling the allowances “serious delays in decision making.”
According to BuzzFeed News, which published the news on Friday, David Mikkelson included material from the Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, and others from 2015 to 2019 – and possibly even earlier – to boost web traffic.
BuzzFeed and Snopes said Mikkelson used his own name, a generic Snopes signature and pseudonym, without citing sources, including single sentences and entire paragraphs, on topics such as gay marriage and the death of David Bowie.
According to a statement from Snopes’ senior leadership, he has been removed from editorial production pending the conclusion of an internal review, but remains the CEO and 50% shareholder in the company.
“Let’s be clear: Plagiarism undermines our mission and values, period. It has no place in this organization in any context.”
In a separate statement, eight current Snopes writers also condemned Mikkelson’s actions, while former employees told BuzzFeed that he routinely encouraged the app as a way to make Snopes appear faster than they actually are.
Mikkelson did not immediately return an Associated Press email requesting comment on Saturday. He told BuzzFeed that his behavior was due to his lack of formal journalism experience.
“I don’t come from a journalistic background,” he said. “I wasn’t used to gathering news. I’ve crossed the limit of copyright infringement several times. I have this.”
BuzzFeed News said Snopes, created under a different name in 1994 by Mikkelson and his then-wife Barbara Hamel, won two Webby Awards and served as one of Facebook’s confirmed partners between December 2016 and February 2019. In recent years, the site has been the focus of a contentious ownership battle between Mikkelson and the company that bought Hamel’s shares.
It flagged news from a number of broadcasters, including BuzzFeed News, The New York Times, CNN, NBC News and the BBC. Six were originally published under the Mikkelson pseudonym Jeff Zarronandia, three were under Mikkelson’s name, and the remainder as “Snopes staff.” Snopes said it identified 140 stories with potential issues, including 54 that were found to contain appropriate material.
Snopes also talked about inappropriately attributed AP material. He did not specify which stories.
Senior management said in a statement that Snopes removed unrelated content while leaving individual pages. An editor’s note will be used to summarize the issues and link to the original sources.
“We are in the process of archiving and retracting all offensive stories and disabling monetization features on these posts,” the statement said. “We will try to contact every news organization whose news we find appropriate to apologize,” he said.
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