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The Media

Snopes.com Co-Founder Accused of Copying from Other Sites Without Attribution (buzzfeednews.com) 126

Posted by EditorDavid from the black-and-white-and-read-all-over dept.
The co-founder of the fact-checking website Snopes has been accused of publishing articles that are too accurate: copying text from other more authorative web sites.

Snopes.com describes them as "sentences or paragraphs from various news sites pasted into Snopes news stories without appropriate attribution." BuzzFeed News writes: A BuzzFeed News investigation has found that between 2015 and 2019, Mikkelson wrote and published dozens of articles containing material plagiarized from news outlets such as the Guardian and the LA Times. 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... BuzzFeed News found dozens of articles on Snopes' site that include language — sometimes entire paragraphs — that appear to have been copied without attribution from news outlets that include the New York Times, CNN, NBC News, and the BBC... Snopes's subsequent internal review identified 140 articles with possible problems and 54 that were found to include appropriated material...

"That was his big SEO/speed secret," said Binkowski, whom Snopes fired without explanation in 2018 (she currently manages the fact-checking site Truth or Fiction). "He would instruct us to copy text from other sites, post them verbatim so that it looked like we were fast and could scoop up traffic, and then change the story in real time. I hated it and wouldn't tell any of the staff to do it, but he did it all the time." Two other former employees also said that copying and rewriting content was part of Mikkelson's strategy for driving traffic to Snopes' site...
Thanks to Slashdot reader PolygamousRanchKid for submitting this story. BuzzFeed notes that Mikkelson himself had also begun using a pseudonym "intended to mislead the trolls and conspiracy theorists who frequently targeted the site and its writers." That byline linked to a satirical bio claiming that in 2006 they'd "won the Pulitzer Prize for numismatics" (coin collecting) and were "also the winner of the Distinguished Conflagration Award of the American Society of Muleskinners for 2005."

Snopes.com actually thanked BuzzFeed's reporter for letting them know, calling BuzzFeed's article "an example of dogged, watchdog journalism we cherish" (while adding "Our staff has moved quickly to fix the problem... Our reputation is dependent on our ability to get things right, and more importantly, to quickly correct the record when we are wrong.") Besides removing Mikkelson's purloined content (and preventing him, though he's still the site's co-owner, from publishing on it), Snopes.com says that in addition, "We will attempt to contact each news outlet whose reporting we appropriated to issue an apology."

In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Mikkelson attributed the unattributed sentence-copying to his lack of formal journalism experience. "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...."

I remember when Snopes.com was just an entertaining fringe web site debunking kooky claims turning up in forwarded emails or on Usenet. Was it a victim of its own success — drawn into the 24/7 news cycle, with its "race to be first"? Were they overwhelmed by the amount of misinformation being spread on social media that needed debunking? In a statement to BuzzFeed, Mikkelson had this to say: 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.
And on Twitter, BuzzFeed's reporter added that "I don't like that this story is being weaponized by bad actors like Steve Bannon to unfairly and baselessly smear the work of Snopes' staff writers who do good work and had no part in this."
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Snopes.com Co-Founder Accused of Copying from Other Sites Without Attribution More

Snopes.com Co-Founder Accused of Copying from Other Sites Without Attribution

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  • Hold on a sec (Score:5, Funny)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday August 15, 2021 @03:46AM (#61693843)

    Let me check Snopes to see if this is true.

    • Funny thing - Snopes confirmed it loudly! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Sunday August 15, 2021 @01:56PM (#61694965) Journal

      I find it interesting that Snopes is being very clear that it's true - he copy/paste sentences without attribution, which he absolutely should not have done. They've suspended this author - who is the founder and 50% owner.

      No weaseling in their response, no trying to justify it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        I find it interesting that Snopes is being very clear that it's true - he copy/paste sentences without attribution, which he absolutely should not have done. They've suspended this author - who is the founder and 50% owner.

        No weaseling in their response, no trying to justify it.

        Why is it interesting? It's true after all. Presumably there's evidence so denying it, or weaseling around it just hurt the reputation of the site.

        It's just easier to admit fault happened and it was dealt with and be transparent abou

  • Film at 11! :rolleyes: Posted with Commodore 64 emulator VICE 3.1

    • I'm more worried that the copy/pasting might have compromised the accuracy (true or false) of what's on the site more than anything.

      Copy/paste without crediting the sources puts a real ding in a site like this's credibility. :-\

  • That Snopes will post stories that resolve in favor of the liberal narrative and ignore stories that resolve to favor the conservative narrative.

    • Re:I've also noted... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Sunday August 15, 2021 @04:43AM (#61693885)

      That Snopes will post stories that resolve in favor of the liberal narrative and ignore stories that resolve to favor the conservative narrative.

      IOW, you've noticed reality's notoriously liberal bias.

      • Re:I've also noted... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by h33t l4x0r ( 4107715 ) on Sunday August 15, 2021 @05:18AM (#61693925)
        In this case the more obvious explanation is they plagiarized liberal sources. But also, yeah.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by SkonkersBeDonkers ( 6780818 )

        That Snopes will post stories that resolve in favor of the liberal narrative and ignore stories that resolve to favor the conservative narrative.

        IOW, you've noticed reality's notoriously liberal bias.

        And it says a lot about the tendency of so-called conservatives to tell blazing lies.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Jack9 ( 11421 )

        > IOW, you've noticed reality's notoriously liberal bias.

        Reality is not concerned with spin. Written history is.
        Snopes is a form of written history, which is clearly biased on some topics.

      • Re:I've also noted... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by RoccamOccam ( 953524 ) on Sunday August 15, 2021 @10:38AM (#61694431)

        IOW, you've noticed reality's notoriously liberal bias.

        The original quote is “The facts of life are conservative.” -- Margaret Thatcher

        • Maggie was wrong though. The real facts of life is that things are murky and not easily split up into black and white, right and wrong, true and false. Politicians hate murkiness.

          • Politicians hate murkiness.

            Yes. Coincidentally humans tend to hate it too. Note that I'm not trying to make the argument here that politicians are human.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by XXongo ( 3986865 )

        That Snopes will post stories that resolve in favor of the liberal narrative and ignore stories that resolve to favor the conservative narrative.

        Their final answer True/False/partly True may have some liberal bias (sometimes I've seen some fact checks that get a final rating of "mixed", where my comment would have been "well, what they said is incorrect as stated, that's "false" by my reading.") But the good thing about them is that they give sources at the end, so you can look up the data.

        (and... the criticism here seems to mostly be that he didn't give sources... but this seems to be about news articles posted on Snopes, not their fact checking.

      • > IOW, you've noticed reality's notoriously liberal bias.

        I can't believe how many people still post this magical thinking meme, especially when the GP is talking about a *reporting* bias here.

        But sure, please tell us more about how you rationally think that the world is magically biased in your favor. I'll get the popcorn.

        • Reality is biased towards being more complex than simple black and white answers. Thus in politics there is a bias towards more nuanced viewpoints than in dogmatic rigid ones.

    • That's because American conservative narratives aren't, not really. Read this short 1901 essay on patriotism [wikisource.org] by old British conservative G. K. Chesterton and you'll find a full list of things that mostly match what current American conservatives do wrong.

      Fix those things and you'll be empowered enough to change the tide. Don't fix them, keep dwelling on and deepening them, and Conservatism will continue to become but a parody of itself.

      • "Conservatism" is a moving target almost by definition.

        But at least during most of my lifetime, conservatives at least claimed to try to conserve some of the things that are absolute, bedrock foundations of our culture. Things like the sanctity of life, personal and economic liberty restrained only insofar as necessary to protect the rights of others; peace through strength, but without unnecessary aggression or provocation. And also, perhaps most controversially, the Judeo-Christian ideals that underlie

        • And also, perhaps most controversially, the Judeo-Christian ideals that underlie each of the above.

          Well, these are neither Jewish nor Christian, they're Enlightenment ideals. Although one might argue the Enlightenment arises from a distillation of Jewish, Christian, Roman and Greek ideals, hence there's historical continuity.

          I share with most conservatives an absolute abhorrence of the Demoncrat party and its ragtag band of ignorant and/or malevolent leftists, socialist, communists, marxists, and totalitarians.

          As a foreigner I see the Democrat party as a mere social-democratic party, closer to the center than is usual for social-democracy, but otherwise not much different from any of the leading European parties. And those come from the same cultural basis. In fact, when looked from the pe

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by kbg ( 241421 )

      So you are saying a site that focues exclusively on truth and fact checking information, sides with liberal narrative. Now why would that be? It's almost like one side has facts on their side.

      • On a side note they have at times been pretty lazy. For instance I remember they used to have an article about the 1919 Molasses flood in Boston. They basically said that couldn't have happened, molasses moves too slowly and who ever heard of having enough to make a flood.

    • I've also noticed this. Though I can't help but think that the "conservative narrative" has defaulted to bat shit insane while the "liberal narrative" doesn't actually require any debunking.

      If one side always lies the fact checkers will naturally appear very biased.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Graymalkin ( 13732 ) *

      I'm sure that's not because the "conservative narrative" has drifted into alternative "facts" fantasy land. Surely not. It must be some liberal biased conspiracy. It just has to be! The Conservative ethos cannot fail, it can only be failed.

    • That Snopes will post stories that resolve in favor of the liberal narrative and ignore stories that resolve to favor the conservative narrative.

      One of the recent 'conservative narratives' is that Trump was going to be reinstated a couple of days ago. You need even distribution of dumbshittery to demand a balance of Snopes stories.

      https://www.snopes.com/fact-ch... [snopes.com]

      https://www.independent.co.uk/... [independent.co.uk]

    • And this is bullshit. Unless by "liberal" you mean it is trying to find the truth instead of believing the lies of the current conservative political leaders. Snopes comes under first first, for having the name "Snopes" (ie, opposed to creationism). Second, for calling out lies during political campaigns (to be fair, it's a minefield, stick to science and stats). And third, disputing all of Trump's blatant lies really caused the neo-neo-cons to explode in rage.

      Reality doesn't really have a liberal bias.

    • That Snopes will post stories that resolve in favor of the liberal narrative and ignore stories that resolve to favor the conservative narrative.

      People often fall victim to confirmation bias. Every person has bias, but a fact checker must check their bias at the door when determining the how truthy something is.

  • They can copy whatever they want. Fuck this world.

  • Lack of formal journalism experience (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Samantha Wright ( 1324923 ) on Sunday August 15, 2021 @05:02AM (#61693909) Homepage Journal

    In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Mikkelson attributed the unattributed sentence-copying to his lack of formal journalism experience. "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...."

    Can anyone here attest that they weren't taught about the evils of plagiarism in middle school or high school? My own education makes it really hard to believe when plagiarists claim ignorance, but I don't know how harshly I should be condemning Mikkelson here.

    • Can anyone here attest that they weren't taught about the evils of plagiarism in middle school or high school?

      Not exactly, but I will say that it rarely came up at all during my school career. I was never ever accused of appropriating someone else's content, as even back in elementary school I would at least have the decency to rewrite a sentence I stole, using different word choices and maybe even a sentence reorganization. But more than that, I don't remember anyone ever pounding on the idea that you couldn't just copy stuff, I only barely remember it being mentioned at all.

    • "Can anyone here attest that they weren't taught about the evils of plagiarism in middle school or high school?

      You mean the place where kids copy Wikipedia articles verbatim so they can turn in that report they were assigned as schoolwork?

    • Can anyone here attest that they weren't taught about the evils of plagiarism in middle school or high school?

      I don't recall an explanation only a penalty.

      My own education makes it really hard to believe when plagiarists claim ignorance, but I don't know how harshly I should be condemning Mikkelson here.

      Lets say I spend a year studying a topic and taking trips all over the world all to write a 5 page article explaining something new and interesting nobody else knows.

      Someone rips off my work using different words but essentially communicating the same thing and attributes it to me.

      or

      Someone rips off my work using different words but essentially communicating the same thing and skips attribution.

      What is the effective difference? Either way my lame paywall is dest

    • Can anyone here attest that they weren't taught about the evils of plagiarism in middle school or high school?

      It started in 4th grade for me. They told use when writing book reports, we were not to write exactly what the Encyclopedia from the Library says as that is plagiarism.

      Still, I could see dismissing the idea of plagiarism in his head as being less important than proving something is true/untrue. Not that is justifies it, but I could see it happening that way.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hawk ( 1151 )

      >Can anyone here attest that they weren't taught about the evils of plagiarism
      >in middle school or high school?

      Further investigation has revealed that they *were* given a course on plagiarism.

      Senator Biden kindly offered to step in and teach it during a Senate recess . . . :)

  • Unlike, say Wikipedia (Score:4, Funny)

    by nagora ( 177841 ) on Sunday August 15, 2021 @06:48AM (#61694001)

    Which is about 80% plagiarised material.

    • Re:Unlike, say Wikipedia (Score:5, Funny)

      by gosso920 ( 6330142 ) on Sunday August 15, 2021 @08:42AM (#61694197)
      [Citation needed]

    • With something like Wikipedia I use it for two reasons: 1) as a source of information to appease for my own curiosity about various topics, or 2) as a source of information for real research that I'm doing.

      If 1), then I don't really care if it's plagiarized. I do care if it's incorrect, but really even then if it's incorrect the impact on me is minor.

      If 2), then I definitely care about plagiarism and whether it's correct. For that reason I will only use its information if the fact I'm looking for has a veri

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nagora ( 177841 )

        With something like Wikipedia I use it for two reasons: 1) as a source of information to appease for my own curiosity about various topics, or 2) as a source of information for real research that I'm doing.

        If 1), then I don't really care if it's plagiarized. I do care if it's incorrect, but really even then if it's incorrect the impact on me is minor.

        If 2), then I definitely care about plagiarism and whether it's correct. For that reason I will only use its information if the fact I'm looking for has a verifiable reference that is widely accepted (eg a peer-reviewed paper). I would never outright cite a Wikipedia article in a paper, but would use Wikipedia as a stepping stone to get to a reference that I can cite. If there's a "fact" without a reference I will look elsewhere for a verifiable reference. Usually that Wikipedia "fact" is true and can be referenced, but just hasn't been put in the article.

        I almost never go to Wikipedia for information about a controversial topic, like politics, so it's possible there is a ton of false information on Wikipedia that I just don't see.

        In other words: WP is a stand-in for a decent search engine that would present WP's citations along with all the stuff not cited.

        On other other words: WP is shit but so is Google so it sort of balances out.

        • Yeah WP is crappy but fastest for research to follow up with citations. I do think for casual information and curiosity it's pretty great. Easy and fun to get sucked down the WP rabbit hole.

    • Re:Unlike, say Wikipedia (Score:4, Funny)

      by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Sunday August 15, 2021 @08:53AM (#61694219)
      No kidding, I was reading an article about a bacterial infection that was transmitted by fleas on there, turns out it was plagueiarized.
  • One of the sources for the Buzzfeed story is saying that Mikkelson has also been quietly changing the byline of other writers on Snopes to his own [twitter.com].

  • A BuzzFeed employee stated that she wants to kill all men.
    Slightly moreconcerning than plagiarism.
    She still works there.

  • The most you will get from them is a half-apology for making a mistake.

    But intentional plagiarism is not a "mistake". It's stealing. Mikkelson is a thief, not just some forgetful, accident-prone writer. Students at universities have lost their degrees and been kicked out for less.

    But the politically powerful have no shame. They are protected by the clique until such time as they are no longer useful. Then watch your back! Remember Cuomo.

    • What's especially hilarious to me about this is that last time I checked they used something in the browser to prevent casual copying of text on their site. You could still copy stuff if you looked at the source of the page, but they had disabled the context menu option for copy through the browser somehow. That was probably 15+ years ago.

  • Should I check Snopes to see if the story is true or not?

  • What good ... (Score:3)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Sunday August 15, 2021 @10:45AM (#61694449)

    ... does copying from the NYT do? When it might be the NYT that users are trying to debunk?

  • Plagiarism (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Martin S. ( 98249 ) on Sunday August 15, 2021 @11:51AM (#61694627) Journal

    Plagiarism It is wrong, but doing it from credible sources doesn't undermine the truthfulness of their debunking.

  • Fair use (Score:4, Interesting)

    by slazzy ( 864185 ) on Sunday August 15, 2021 @01:08PM (#61694843) Homepage Journal
    Wouldn't this be covered under fair use if it's only a few words?

    • Re:Fair use (Score:4, Informative)

      by porges ( 58715 ) on Sunday August 15, 2021 @06:10PM (#61695625) Homepage

      Not against the charge of plagiarism, because "fair use" is a defense against a charge of copyright infringement, which is not the same thing as plagiarism -- although obviously they're similar concepts. If you pass off something you didn't write as your own, you are a plagiarist, even if the thing you've copied is public domain.

      for instance:

      https://copyrightalliance.org/... [copyrightalliance.org]

  • Well, still better than just making up the lies yourself.

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