BuzzFeed fires its political editor for plagiarism

BuzzFeed fires its political editor for plagiarism
BuzzFeed fires its political editor for plagiarism
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The News Minute | July 26, 2014 | 9.29 pm ISTBuzzFeed has sacked its viral politics editor after Twitter users pointed out instances of plagiarism in his work, and has apologized to its readers.The Guardian reported that BuzzFeed’s editor-in-chief Ben Smith issued an apology to its users saying that the website owed to its readers to be “honest” with them. In a statement, Smith said that the website had reviewed 500 posts by the political editor Benny Johnson, and found that the latter had plagiarized phrases and sentences from websites such as Yahoo Answer,s Boston Globe, and About.com, Wikipedia and other websites. Smith said "We owe you, our readers, an apology. This plagiarism is a breach of our fundamental responsibility to be honest with you — in this case, about who wrote the words on our site."BuzzFeed was started seven years ago in New York by Jonah Paretti and John Johnson. According to its website, the company is: “the social news and entertainment company. BuzzFeed is redefining online advertising with its social, content-driven publishing technology. BuzzFeed provides the most shareable breaking news, original reporting, entertainment, and video across the social web to its global audience of more than 150M.” It has also branched out into traditional reporting in recent years, and also has a India website.

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