The Daily Beast accused the New York Daily News‘ Shaun King of plagiarizing its exclusive story. But, King claims he directly quoted from the article and the Daily News says it lost the attribution in editing.
Then a previous article by King was flagged on Twitter for the same problem, plagiarizing from fivethirtyeight.com, Capital New York reported. King said in that case he also included attribution but it was lost in formatting.
The New York Daily News has since added two editor’s notes to the respective stories that carry King’s byline, saying that it lost the attribution in editing.
In a series of tweets, King provided his e-mailed versions of his original stories that show he included attribution. He also criticized the Daily Beast for not contacting him privately first and instead going on Twitter to raise the matter.
In an e-mail to iMediaEthics, King wrote, “The Daily Beast was very unprofessional in the way they handled this. They absolutely should’ve reached out to my editors first.”
King tweeted that the Daily News‘ editorial team apologized for the error, that he originally included attribution, links and block quotes, and that he doesn’t go back to read his articles after they are published on the website. King went on to say:
The Daily Beast tweeted its problems with the King article, with executive editor Noah Shachtman writing. “Looks like @NYDailyNews ripped off our story word-for-word.” Shachtman told Capital New York.
“In the end, we are judged not by what’s in our raw copy but what goes up on the printed page or on a website. So while I appreciate that there may have been an effort to do attribution, ultimately we are judged by our results, not our intentions.”
The Daily News agreed with King, saying the attribution was lost in editing. In an editor’s note on the article accused of lifting from The Daily Beast, the newspaper said
“Editor’s Note: An editing error mistakenly removed attribution to a story originally published by The Daily Beast. The mistake has been corrected. The News regrets the error.”
The Daily News also tweeted the editor’s note.
As for the article that didn’t attribute fivethirtyeight.com, the Daily News added this editor’s note:
“Editor’s Note: An editing error mistakenly removed attribution to a story originally published by FiveThirtyEight. The mistake has been corrected. The News regrets the error.”
iMediaEthics asked fivethirtyeight.com if it complained about the lack of attribution previously. A spokesperson for fivethirtyeight.com, parent company ESPN’s Amy Phillips, told iMediaEthics by e-mail, “We appreciate that The Daily News added the appropriate attribution.”
iMediaEthics has written to the Daily News.
Hat Tip: Dylan Byers and Mediaite
UPDATED: 4/19/2016 5:10 PM With comment from fivethirtyeight.com
UPDATED: 4/19/2016 5:37 PM EST Shaun King posted a Facebook Live video about today.