— Jason Linkins (@dceiver.bsky.social) May 5, 2025 at 11:25 PM
Can’t even begin to name the number of times my work has been plagiarized. Oh! And one time I pointed that out online, and a Media Guy from New York thought it important to lecture me on what the definition of plagiarism was… like I didn’t know.
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— Leah Sottile (@leahsottile.bsky.social) May 5, 2025 at 12:31 PM
A few of my stories show up on google ai and it’s frustrating af to see similar or sometimes identical language from my work in stories in much bigger publications with way more resources than us
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— mollie bryant (@molliebryant.bsky.social) May 5, 2025 at 12:04 PM
I took an investigative reporting course during grad school from a senior NYT journalist. Maybe the best class I took from a skills perspective. I use what I learned all the time
Also: we got marked down for linking to local reporting instead of using NYT Authoritative Voice in assignments
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— Laura Jedeed (@laurajedeed.bsky.social) May 5, 2025 at 11:28 AM
Vividly remembering the AI piece from the Times last year that was near identical to stuff I’d written lol
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— Ed Zitron (@edzitron.com) May 6, 2025 at 9:48 AM
This happens a ton. WaPo also did this after TPM was first to report DOGE was trying to get taxpayer data from the IRS. bsky.app/profile/hunt…
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— Hunter Walker (@hunterw.bsky.social) May 6, 2025 at 9:42 AM
CNN also did this to me when I broke news of the George Santos plea deal. And those are just two I can remember
— Hunter Walker (@hunterw.bsky.social) May 6, 2025 at 9:45 AM
It happened again today with a Politico “exclusive” already reported by The American Prospect. I was too kind in my headline calling it a part of mainstream media’s business. Plagiarism of smaller outlets is a core part of Beltway media’s business.
Absolutely every word of this was in my story revealing what Medicaid cuts were in the bill (prospect.org/health/2025-…), and more.
D.C. Media is a fortress unto itself.
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— David Dayen (@ddayen.bsky.social) May 8, 2025 at 7:35 AM
Anthony Clark is an independent journalist who reached out to me with a story of his enraging ordeal of being plagiarized by the mainstream media. His report is now at the center of some big news in the Trump administration, and he still is not getting full credit for his work from some mainstream outlets. Back on April 20th, he published a report that Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, Trump’s former nominee for Surgeon General, had distorted key parts of her résumé. Four days later, CBS News wrote up basically the same story and they attributed his work in the 24th paragraph of their 27 paragraph “report.” After reaching out to them, Clark was able to get CBS’s attribution they hid at the bottom of the story up into the 6th paragraph of their article that repeated his reporting, but it’s a scandal that it was that far down in the first place and the 6th paragraph is still too low.
The White House pulled Nesheiwat’s nomination yesterday, and as Politico notes, it “comes after a report by Anthony Clark on Substack that she obfuscated facts about her medical education” (Clark told me that they only attributed him by name after he asked them to). That Politico can stick that sentence in the second paragraph of their story yet still write the same article on Medicaid cuts that David Dayen already did demonstrates how conscious media is of this extremely common practice that is not new.
Bloomberg broke the news about Nesheiwat’s nomination being pulled, and gave away the game of how mainstream outlets view independent reporters who threaten their business model of spending millions to report the news. CBS News wrote it was “first reported by independent freelance reporter Anthony Clark” yet Bloomberg credits CBS with “report[ing]” the story while saying that Clark’s “earlier report alleged she ‘distorted’ key parts of her resume” (emphasis mine). Why the hell are they using words like “alleged” when her nomination was pulled? Isn’t that confirmation that the so-called allegations are true?
The Wall Street Journal also wrongly credited CBS with breaking Clark’s story and makes no mention of Clark in their writeup of Trump pulling Nesheiwat’s nomination. NPR noted that there was “scrutiny” over Nesheiwat’s credentials without crediting how we know that.
Clark reached out and asked NPR to attribute his reporting, and after a delayed response, they added “as first reported by independent journalist Tony Clark” to the sentence screenshotted above. This stuff happens so often it’s impossible to view it as anything other than a conscious decision, and any journalist who has to be asked to cite their sources has utterly failed at the most basic task of their chosen profession.
Reporting the news has real impacts as Nesheiwat’s pulled nomination demonstrates, and it’s vitally important that credit is given where it is due. Trust is the lynchpin of this industry, and mainstream media constantly copying other people’s work and presenting it as their own destroys trust in media while also taking money away from independent reporters whose livelihoods depend on getting proper credit for their work. Clark’s reporting had a tangible impact on a major appointment within the Trump administration, and he should be rewarded for the effort he put in to break the story.
Instead, he was punished and put through an agonizing ordeal far too many independent journalists are familiar with, where he saw his work under someone else’s byline in a major outlet and had to take time out of his day to demand they do the elemental job of a journalist.
Clark told me that prior to publishing it on his own website, he had shopped the story to two major outlets and that “the first had it for a month, editing and fact-checking and continually promising to finish the edit ‘tonight, and send it for attorney review in the morning, then publishing that day or the next’ and then disappearing for days. I lost over a week because the junior editors who were fact-checking it decided to try to re-report parts of it in ways they thought better.” Clark said the other outlet “had it for just over two weeks, not doing an edit, commenting on a few things, but largely ignoring it. I’d learned my lesson, though, and pulled it. Nesheiwat had already began making the rounds in the Senate for her charm offensive, so I knew the hearing was imminent. I had to get it out.”
Plagiarism is obviously a serious charge, as it’s the kind of thing that can get a naive freshman expelled from college, but Clark said he “spoke with several journalists and journalism professors, and each agreed that CBS didn’t just fail to credit me properly, it lifted the main parts of its story from mine.” I don’t know what else to call this common practice other than plagiarism, and if you are a mainstream “journalist” who is rewriting someone else’s article without advancing it forward with some of your own reporting, you are a plagiarist. Full stop.
I use other people’s reporting all the time to do my work as a commentator, and I refuse to begin any critique or commentary before crediting the origin of the report, like in my writeup today about pro-crypto Dems’ scandal reported by The American Prospect. I simply could not do my job without reporters putting in the hard work of digging up the truth first, and I am eternally grateful for everyone at every outlet who does the dirty and unglamorous work of investigative journalism because I would not be here without it. If some lefty loudmouth schmuck on the internet with no formal journalistic education gets this, mainstream media has no excuse. The fact that I can reach all the way back into 2003 to find examples of what the New York Times and other mainstream outlets continue to do today proves that plagiarism is a conscious decision. Mainstream media is overflowing with shameless plagiarists, and it’s on them now to explain how this isn’t a core part of their business.
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