Discussion: Buzzfeed Fires Editor Over Multiple Instances Of Plagiarism

Discussion for article #225579

I remember the old days, after the Dan Rather/National Guard incident, when conservatives were convinced they had “won” the Internet.
All hail @blippoblappo and @crushingbort!

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Having spent five minutes(and lost an equal number of IQ points)
on the web site in question, I would think that being fired
from a place like Buzzfeed would be considered by some
to be a singular honor.
Their content is puerile, and thus the site is perfectly positioned to market toward too many young people who have grown up thinking that Buzzfeed (and many sites like it) are a genuine “News” outlet.
As to the plagiarism I do not condone it, but I understand it.
There is tremendous pressure to create “content” at as break neck a speed as is possible.
We have therefore come to a point where we must ask ourselves if this fellow had enough hard and fast journalistic experience to understand that blogging can be held to the same stringent standards as is print or other media reporting. I say this because I never lose sight of the fact that, in most cases,contributors are blogging, they are not “reporting” and are in no case credentialed members of the press, or any sort of broadcast media.
Now, I am not at all adverse to holding anyone who posts anything of genuine “News” value to any type of public forum where it can be consumed as fact to a higher standard.
My observation is that all these sites have so blurred the line between News and Opinion, and Between “Blog” and News “copy” that those of us with editors credentials ought to do a better and more diligent job of sorting the sheep from the goats. Which is to say, if you’re going to apply journalistic standards to everything that is posted, you had best be prepared for a lot more work, many more headaches, and be ready to apply your standards (whatever they may be) all the way, and with an even hand, particularly as regards political viewpoints with which the correspondents, editors, and even the owners of these popular sites may well disagree.
I doubt they are, as a group, ready to do any such thing, so the pressure at hand reverts to creating “content” for an audience that by and large would not know plagiarism if it bit them on the backside.
This doesn’t make plagiarism correct, or permissible. It does however call into question what rules we are playing under, and that those rules must be to be clearly understood and applied by, for, and to everyone who posts on the Net in a place that calls itself a “News” site.

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I am not sure I understand what you are getting out. Plagiarism exists outside of journalism, its not only news that people copy without getting credit.

Nor do I see the demand for content as an excuse. If you are going to copy someone else’s work to help fill that demand…simply attribute what you are copying to the original author.

This has nothing to do with journalism vs. blogging. In either situation, attribute what you are copying to the original source, its that simple.

This individual just decided to take an easy road. It was no mistake. He purposely set out to use others work under his name to boost his career and brush up his “reputation” for being “one of the web’s deeply original writers”.

He is a thief and a con man in my eyes, pure and simple.

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Buzzfeed is USA Today for Millenials.

Now with more pictographs!

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Good luck getting a job douchebag. Perhaps as a janitor at the George Bush library?

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It’s worse than that. I can’t believe how horrible it is. I wasn’t even aware of it until the other day …

I have frequently visited Buzzfeed, but I never considered it a news site. I have always looked to Buzzfeed for entertainment, although I suppose technically they do post some news there. But also cute and stupid pictorials and kittens!. Does anyone consider Buzzfeed a news site, other than Buzzfeed?

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I get what you’re saying. I wonder if sites like Buzzfeed and even TPM employ fact checkers to ensure that content is properly sourced and attributed? How many times have we seen stories that were not even given a cursory proofreading before being posted? If the so-called new media, in its hurry to get stories online first, can’t even be bothered to proofread, I’m dubious that they are doing the real work of ensuring the integrity of the content. The guy who got fired is certainly to blame for his shoddy, unethical work, but so is Ben Smith and the whole Buzzfeed operation because they set up a culture where what he did was so easily possible.

“an unserious attitude to our work…”

I’m confused… it’s Buzzfeed we’re talking about, not the NYT or Scientific American, right?

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Another conservative dirtbag bites the dust.

They hired Ben Smith, who actually does have a background as a journalist, a couple of years ago to try to give the joint some gravitas. They have tried to venture into some more hard news of late. Michael Hastings, who was a first class investigative journalist, worked there for a while. For what it’s worth, I think they are trying to have a piece of their site be more like Politico or The Daily Beast. They are not really my go-to source so I don’t know how well that’s worked. Clearly, there are issues.

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I had never heard of the guy until this happened.

He was included on Alex Pareene’s “Hack List” in 2013 and reading it makes this a little sweeter.

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If Buzzfeed is going to be consistent with this policy, then Buzzfeed needs to fire Buzzfeed.

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[quote=“DaveyJones64, post:4, topic:7541, full:true”]
I am not sure I understand what you are getting out. (at) Plagiarism exists outside of journalism, its not only news that people copy without getting credit.

I know that it does. Academia is one of the breeding grounds for it. The number of cases in what passes for education circles has risen five fold in the last decade. I do not deny that it exists by any means, nor do I at any point excuse or condone it. Re-read what I wrote, and take your time please.

Nor do I see the demand for content as an excuse.

Nor do I, but there is always pressure, as there is in genuine “News” circles, to be first with a story. And as with real “News” the pressure to “get it first” often supplants the requirement to get it right. That, in part is also the editors job, This is why editors ride herd over reporters in the real world. But for editors to check the great volume on everything that is posted on a web site screaming for hits and content isn’t a practical consideration. It’s supposed to be a team effort. The reporter when asked (or challenged) is supposed to have sources and attributions which may be referenced in the text submitted. But the editors who read all this stuff apparently never saw anything amiss until third parties did. So while the major fault lays with the author, a major flaw is the demand for (supposedly “News” quality") content without the best of news quality oversight. Hence my reference to dividing the sheep from the goats. We have lots of “reporters” It’s time to ask if we have enough editors to maintain the standards we would impose on this medium.

If you are going to copy someone else’s work to help fill that demand…simply attribute what you are copying to the original author.

This has nothing to do with journalism vs. blogging. In either situation, attribute what you are copying to the original source, its that simple.

Here, you over simplify. Here, we are two people, having an informal chat on a subject of mutual interest. This is not in interview, an article, or anything even closely related to what I would consider “Newspaper quality” journalism. We read and quote each other freely, and most of what passes for “News” on these various pop web sites is presented in the same fashion. Sometimes truthful, sometimes objective, sometimes factual, but usually done by someone who has had little or no journalism experience. If we want to hold everyone to one (high) set of standards, you must, in all fairness make crystal clear what those standards are. And if you apply journalistic standards do you apply some of them, the ones that happen to make you happy, or do you apply them strictly across the board, as if we were in a city room working for a for real “agency” of genuine News? Do you start knocking down people’s opinions in favor of cold hard fact, or do you apply a “relaxed” standard, whereby opinion is tolerated by the owner of the blog or web site, and News has a less distinct separation from opinion?
All of these are questions to be asked, and answers to be found in what is still a fairly new medium.
Now, at no point do I condone Plagiarism. I said I understood it.
Now, if you’re going to apply standards in response to “reporting” by non professional journalists, you have to pick a set of them and apply them with uniformity.
There’s an old tech proverb that sez: “That’s the nice thing about standards. There are so many to chose from.”
Now, if you want everyone who posts anything on the Net that might pass for News to be held to a higher standard, I’m right with you. But leave us face it. There is a whole generation of “reporters” out there since the hit driven Net came to be who have never had any journalistic experience, and will believe and use anything from any source is if it were written in stone.
Thus the old gag that goes “They can’t put anything on the Net that isn’t true.”
An entire generation has now been brought up with this idea. If you propose to impose purely journalistic standards on them, I wish you luck. If you propose to edit them more closely to impede the “cut and past” “journalism” of today, you’ll need much more than luck.

This individual just decided to take an easy road. It was no mistake. He purposely set out to use others work under his name to boost his career and brush up his “reputation” for being “one of the web’s deeply original writers”.

That’s another thing I haven’t heard much about. When I was in school a couple of centuries ago, they taught us that intentional Plagiarism also had to carry with it what could today be called “an element of malice aforethought.” You had to steal knowing that you were stealing at the time it was done So there is an element of circumstance to it. Repeated mis-attribution and failure to attribute sources are rookie reporter mistakes that can be put down to some degree to sloppiness, lack of experience, and the rush to get the story. My old editor taught us that you can get away with it once, until you know better. And believe you me, once you learn you don’t forget. What this fellow did was wrong, beyond question, But as a fair minded observer, I’d like to hear the circumstances around each case. Someone who is sloppy winds up doing obits or the agony column until they learn better. That’s the standard of many years ago. If you want to apply them now with so many untrained people ;loose with keyboards, you’ll have to be fair about it while you play bad cop-good cop over the wilderness of the Net today.

He is a thief and a con man in my eyes, pure and simple.

Being judgmental is so easy, isn’t it? I mean you get to be a judge, and there’s hardly any “mental” to it, is there? How bright and simple for you. This fellow did wrong. But studying and understanding the underlying flaws in the system that let him go so wrong so often requires more than snap judgements, does it not?

Josh and crew are executing journalism. Occasionally, a news lite article makes the cut but fact checking is procedure here. I usually sprinkle my umbrage onto Cheerios ® and milk. :wink:

…As a millennial, I would like to point out that we are frequently highly critical of places like BuzzFeed, and I don’t even know anyone who goes there for anything besides cute cat pictures and the like.

I would also like to point out that we have “PLAGIARISM IS A BIG DEAL AND CAN BE FOUND EASILY ON THE INTERNET” stamped on our brains from elementary school.

We are no more stupid on average than anyone else.

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The real story is that Buzzfeed is a cancer on the world and should be destroyed by fire. LOL. OMG. WTF.

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Well, lets examine my statement then. He republished others work under his name, without giving them credit or compensation. He was receiving payment for these pieces, under the notion that they were indeed his.

So he is taking something from someone, without their permission or knowledge, and reselling it for financial reward. That qualifies him as a thief.

He is also misleading his employer by presenting these articles as his own, promoting himself to the employee as “one of the web’s deeply original writers”. A clear misrepresentation of his actual work, to some degree. That qualifies as fraud, which makes him a con man.

Pointing to the grey ethical areas as media rapidly changes doesn’t mitigate that he purposely was trying to scam the “system”. Its sort of like saying the robber isn’t totally responsible because I didn’t have three sets of locks on my door instead of just 1, or even left the door unlocked. He still makes a choice to rip me off.

Now, we can have a discussion about the underlying flaws (or about why I should lock my door), but nothing in that discussion is going to absolve him of his willful acts of deception.

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Perhaps he could get a communications gig with the Senator from Montana.

Too soon?