John Tesh’s Blog Accused Of Plagiarism, Shuttered

Earlier today Jeff Bercovici, who writes for AOL’s DailyFinance blog, published a post noting similarities between various articles on the Web and articles on John Tesh’s official blog.

Specifically, several posts on the blog appeared to be lifted verbatim from various news sources, including several mainstream media sites including CNN, MSNBC, ABC News and Oprah as well as larger blogs, such as WalletPop among others. None of the articles included attribution though some did have very brief introductions before the copied content.

Likely as a result of these allegations, the blog is down at this time though, if you act quick, you can find some of the content in the Google Cache.

The allegations seem to be about as cut and dry as possible, using the cached copies and performing a few simple Google searches, I was able to quickly and easily find about four or five examples of content lifted directly from other sites. Going back through the dates, I was able to find examples of copied works as far back as July, as far as the cached copies reached.

Here’s just one of the example Google results.

And another one.

Though the evidence is about as clear-cut as you can get, it seems unlikely to me that Tesh himself was performing the plagiarism. Almost certainly it was someone under his employ that was managing the blog. However, since it was his blog it is ultimately his responsibility.

Tesh has not commented on the allegations and his blog is simply down at this time, listed merely as being a broken link.

Interestingly, the only original articles I could find were cross-posts from the regular tesh.com site, indicating that the author of the articles on the main site was using authentic work that was being brought into the blog.

Hopefully Tesh will provide some insight as to what happened and how it was able to continue for as long as it did.

In the end, it seems unlikely that any of the entities the blog plagiarized from will sue, especially given the quick action to remove the content, but the potential for a lawsuit is going to make it so that Tesh isn’t likely to say much or shed any light on the incident unless forced.

All in all, it’s just another example of how a plagiarist, if unchecked, can create serious problems for his or her employer and why it is important to verify all works posted for authenticity.

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