Snopes Co-Founder and CEO Admits to Plagiarizing Dozens of Articles
On Friday, Buzzfeed published an article that highlights the widespread and long-running plagiarism of Snopes CEO and co-founder David Mikkelson.
The article, the inquiries for which resulted in an investigation by Snopes itself, has resulted in the retraction of some 54 articles and resulted in another 140 pieces being identified as being possibly problematic.
Mikkelson, for his part, has admitted to the plagiarism and has been suspended from his editorial duties at the site. However, he remains an officer for the publication and is a 50% shareholder in the company behind it.
Obviously, this scandal is a significant blow for Snopes. As a fact-checking website, its ability to perform that function hinges entirely upon its reputation. To that end, any plagiarism scandal represents a serious challenge, but to have one that involves dozens of articles written by the site’s co-founder, it becomes almost insurmountable.
To make matters even worse, Mikkelson’s bad behavior isn’t just connected to plagiarism. As one delves deeper into the allegations, it becomes clear that it isn’t just a case of a writer with a heavy hand for copy and paste, but a broader ethical breakdown that represents a years-long failing on Mikkelson’s part.
Though Snopes is doing everything that it can to recover from this, including being open and transparent about the process it’s going through, this may simply be too much for the site.
More Than Just Plagiarism
The plagiarism allegations against Mikkelson are fairly straightforward. Both BuzzFeed and Snopes’ own investigation show that dozens of articles that Mikkelson worked on contained text copied and pasted without attribution from other sources.
Sometimes the amount of text was only a sentence or two, other times it was whole paragraphs, and at least one article was copied in its entirety with only minor changes.
To this end, Mikkelson has acknowledged the plagiarism and, in a statement, said that he has given “full authority” to Snopes’ managing editor Doreen Marchionni to take any measures necessary to address the situation.
But while widespread plagiarism is bad enough, the story doesn’t end there.
First, Mikkelson’s plagiarism wasn’t limited to his byline. Many of the articles at issue were written under a pseudonym, Jeff Zarronandia. Jeff’s name previously appeared on at least 23 articles, at least six of which are among the ones to be retracted.
According to former Snopes managing editor Brooke Binkowski, he created the new identity as a means to shield himself when he covered politically heated topics.
When writing Jeff’s biography for the site, Mikkelson claimed that he had won a Pulitzer Prize for numismatics. However, such bios are often irreverent on Snopes with many of them making wildly outrageous claims as a means of trolling.
To make matters even worse, the plagiarism does not appear to be the product of laziness on Mikkelson’s part, but rather, was very much intentional and part of his writing and publishing process.
According to Binkowski, Mikkelson’s normal way of writing was to grab text from third-party sites that covered the same topic, get the article up as fast as possible, and then edit it after the post was live. According to Binkowski and another anonymous former employee, this was the model Mikkelson wanted the site to operate under.
Obviously, this model is wildly unethical for a variety of reasons and casts a negative light on Mikkelson’s work. However, Mikkelson isn’t doing himself any favors either.
Missing the Point
Mikkelson released a statement (which is in the footer of the original BuzzFeed article) where he acknowledged that the issues had been discovered and that he was giving the managing editor full authority to handle the situation as she sees fit.
However, Mikkelson’s statement also misses the point. Though, it mentions him engaging in “multiple serious copyright violations of content that Snopes didn’t have rights to use,” he never once mentions plagiarism.
While it’s true that many of his plagiarisms almost certainly did amount to copyright infringements, that is not why people are upset, and it is unlikely any of the plagiarized publications are looking to file a lawsuit.
The reason people are upset is that Mikkelson and Snopes have a stated mission of fact checking and working to clear up misinformation. However, Mikkelson’s actions were creating misinformation.
Not only was he using fake pen names, but he was posting the work of others without attribution.
Plagiarism, at its most fundamental level, is a lie. A plagiarist is someone who claims to have written or created something when they did not. Though we tend to think about plagiarism as a theft from the victim, it is also a lie to the audience.
While that is bad under any circumstance, it hits much harder when it’s from the site and the person who is supposed to be an arbiter of truth. To that end, this plagiarism isn’t about an unethical journalist, it’s betrayal of the audience.
Though Snopes is doing everything it can to address the issue and restore its reputation, without Mikkelson acknowledging the actual issues, their efforts can only go so far.
Bottom Line
We are in a time when fact-checkers are under siege. Misinformation is rampant and, whether it’s due to personal or political motivations, there is a strong desire to discredit those that challenge that misinformation.
Mikkelson basically made their case for them. Not only did he plagiarize, but he did so with intent, and he used pseudonyms without letting the audience know it was a fake name. A supposed arbiter of truth has been lying to us for years, going back to at least 2014.
The worst part is, though none of this actually indicates the information on Snopes is inaccurate, it means the site will likely never be seen as credible again. That, in turn, harms the other reporters and editors that work there and work hard every day to earn the public’s trust in a very mistrusting climate.
If this were simply the case of a reporter going against policy and plagiarizing, it would be something Snopes could easily recover from. However, this is the site’s co-founder, and he apparently did it with intent and as part of a policy he created.
It’s hard to imagine a bigger blow to the site’s reputation, and that’s especially damming because Snopes, like all fact-checkers, live and die by that reputation.
If Snopes is able to recover, it will require some drastic action and a great deal of time to do so.
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