Click here to subscribe today or Login.
Dear readers,
On Tuesday, we let go of a reporter for plagiarizing quotes that appeared in Saturday’s Times Leader, “Finishing the Fight sends care packages to military.”
An investigation into that story revealed the reporter copied and pasted pieces of content she found online and passed them off as direct quotes from a source she interviewed for a story.
The Times Leader has a zero-tolerance policy for plagiarism. That’s because your trust in us — and the expectation you as readers have that we’re telling you the truth — is the most important aspect of what we do. Once we lose credibility with you, we’ve lost our ability to properly do our jobs.
Our immediate investigation suggests this was an isolated incident, but we are reviewing the reporter’s entire body of work with us to confirm that is the case. Once we learn more, I’ll share that information with you.
Additionally, we’re reviewing our editing layers to see what — if anything — we could have done to have prevented the plagiarized quotes from appearing on our pages. In this instance, the plagiarized quotes fit so perfectly into the reporter’s story that they didn’t raise any red flags.
Because our credibility is such a vital part of what we do, we took immediate action against the reporter. Within hours of being alerted to the plagiarism, the reporter no longer was an employee of the Times Leader.
We’ve removed the story with plagiarized quotes from timesleader.com and have assigned another journalist to re-report the story.
I sincerely apologize for allowing plagiarized quotes onto our pages. It is my hope that our transparency here will bode well for our credibility. But if you have any questions about the news-gathering or editing process, I’d encourage you to reach out to me.
George Spohr is executive editor of the Times Leader. He can be reached at gspohr@civitasmedia.com.