Head of fact-checking site Snopes apologizes for plagiarizing mainstream news outlets
It’s no urban legend: He stole others’ work.
The CEO and co-founder of Snopes.com, the fact-checking source commonly utilized by social media giant Facebook, has apologized for plagiarizing from articles published on mainstream news outlets, calling his actions “serious lapses in judgment.”
From 2015 to 2019, David Mikkelson plagiarized material from sources such as the Los Angeles Times, and The Guardian in an attempt to boost traffic to his site, according to BuzzFeed News.
The BuzzFeed report goes further and says that Mikkelson used his name, a Snopes byline, and pseudonym when he published the plagiarized material on topics ranging from same-sex marriage to celebrity deaths.
Since the report, Mikkelson was suspended from his post pending the conclusion of a Snopes investigation. However, he still holds his title and his 50% of shares in the company, Snopes said.
“Let us be clear: Plagiarism undermines our mission and values, full stop. It has no place in any context within this organization,” Snopes said in a statement. “We are in the process of archiving and retracting all of the offending stories, along with disabling any monetization features on those posts. We will attempt to contact each news outlet whose reporting we appropriated to issue an apology.”
Mikkelson said that his conduct was due to his lack of journalistic experience in previous roles.
“I didn’t come from a journalism background,” he said. “I wasn’t used to doing news aggregation. A number of times I crossed the line to where it was copyright infringement. I own that.”
With Wire News Services
