Snopes Retracts Dozens of Articles After Review Finds Co-founder Plagiarized

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The Epoch Times

David Mikkelson, often writing under a pseudonym, copied and pasted entire paragraphs from news websites

Snopes, a fact-checking website, has retracted at least 54 articles after finding its co-founder and CEO repeatedly plagiarized content from other websites.

David Mikkelson, the Snopes co-founder, has been suspended as the website completes an internal review of the issue.

The review so far has uncovered 54 stories that Mikkelson wrote using the pseudonym โ€œJeff Zarronandiaโ€ or were published under a generic โ€œSnopes Staffโ€ byline, Snopes senior management said in a statement on Friday.

The stories used โ€œappropriated material,โ€ the management said.

Mikkelson plagiarized entire paragraphs from news websites for the articles, according to an Epoch Times review of some of the articles.

For example, a 2015 story about Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis denying requests from gay couples for marriage licenses, matches nearly word-for-word a Reuters article about the development.

A 2016 story under Mikkelsonโ€™s name about the death of boxer Muhammad Ali pulled a paragraph from an NBC article.

Readers who go to the Snopes articles are met with an alert that the content has been retracted.

โ€œThe post was retracted because some or all of its content was taken from other sources without proper attribution,โ€ the pages state.

Each page now includes a link to the stories from which Mikkelson plagiarized.

The plagiarism was first identified by BuzzFeed News, which contacted Snopes, triggering the internal investigation.

Mikkelson, who did not respond to a request for comment, told BuzzFeed that what he did stemmed from not having formal journalism training.

โ€œI didnโ€™t come from a journalism background,โ€ he said. โ€œI wasnโ€™t used to doing news aggregation. A number of times I crossed the line to where it was copyright infringement. I own that.โ€

Snopes did not answer emailed questions.

Snopes writers said in a joint statement that they condemned what Mikkelson did.

By Zachary Stieber

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