Investigation: co-founder of Snopes is a huge plagiarist
Aug 14, 2021 21:59:19 GMT -5
robeiae and michaelw like this
Post by Optimus on Aug 14, 2021 21:59:19 GMT -5
I'm feeling just a tiny amount of schadenfraude only because Mikkelson's such a far-lefty douchebag who has allowed his political views to bias some of the "fact checks" on Snopes over the past few years.
Anyway, so apparently someone from Buzzfeed noticed some wording in a Snopes article that was suspiciously close to that found in a legitimate news article, so Buzzfeed did a deep dive and found 54 articles, all written by Mikkelson, that contained blatant plagiarism.
Additionally, former and current employees said that he not only plagiarized intentionally but told staff to do the same and that stealing other people's work has basically always been his business model. He also created a fake persona to post a lot of these plagiarized articles under so that nobody would know it was him (according to the article, he usually used the fake persona when he was posting politically-slanted "fact checks").
Of course, now that he's been caught, he's pretending to be totally contrite and offered a "I have no formal training in journalism so I had no idea that this major ethical violation that we all learn not to do in elementary school was a bad thing but now I've learned a valuable lesson and promise to never do it again" type of apology.
I think Snopes and other so-called fact-checking sites ostensibly provide a valuable service that is desperately needed (especially in today's climate), but some of them - especially Snopes and to a lesser degree Politifact - have allowed the political and ideological biases of some of their writers to infect their "fact checking" articles, to the point that some of their conclusions range from head-scratching to biased bullshit.
The article is long but a fascinating expose: www.buzzfeednews.com/article/deansterlingjones/snopes-cofounder-plagiarism-mikkelson
Anyway, so apparently someone from Buzzfeed noticed some wording in a Snopes article that was suspiciously close to that found in a legitimate news article, so Buzzfeed did a deep dive and found 54 articles, all written by Mikkelson, that contained blatant plagiarism.
Additionally, former and current employees said that he not only plagiarized intentionally but told staff to do the same and that stealing other people's work has basically always been his business model. He also created a fake persona to post a lot of these plagiarized articles under so that nobody would know it was him (according to the article, he usually used the fake persona when he was posting politically-slanted "fact checks").
Of course, now that he's been caught, he's pretending to be totally contrite and offered a "I have no formal training in journalism so I had no idea that this major ethical violation that we all learn not to do in elementary school was a bad thing but now I've learned a valuable lesson and promise to never do it again" type of apology.
I think Snopes and other so-called fact-checking sites ostensibly provide a valuable service that is desperately needed (especially in today's climate), but some of them - especially Snopes and to a lesser degree Politifact - have allowed the political and ideological biases of some of their writers to infect their "fact checking" articles, to the point that some of their conclusions range from head-scratching to biased bullshit.
The article is long but a fascinating expose: www.buzzfeednews.com/article/deansterlingjones/snopes-cofounder-plagiarism-mikkelson
