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2014-05-19 Home Front: Culture Wars

CNN sacks editor who plagiarized 50+ articles

This is the second high level editor canned in 20 months for plagiarism. Fareed Zakaria was sent packing in August, 2012 by CNN for plagiarism.

Miss Marie-Louise Gumuchian has been in the news business for almost 10 years: Here is her profile from Reuters.
In an editor's note quietly posted Friday morning, CNN announced that Marie-Louise Gumuchian, a former CNN News editor, who mostly covered international affairs, plagiarized at least 50 published stories.

Apparently she was caught after an internal editing process caught an instance of plagiarism before the story was published. This led to an internal investigation that uncovered at least 50 other instances and to Gumuchian's termination:

CNN has discovered multiple instances of plagiarism by Marie-Louise Gumuchian, a former CNN news editor. She wrote frequently about international news, writing and reporting about Africa, Europe, and the Middle East from our London bureau.

An unpublished story flagged last week during our editing process led to an internal investigation that uncovered other examples in about 50 published stories, and our investigation is ongoing.

Posted by badanov 2014-05-19 00:00|| || Front Page|| [11134 views ] Top

#1 Got to do this nowadays. All the great plots have been written.

Posted by Alaska Paul 2014-05-19 00:22|| 2014-05-19 00:22|| Front Page Top

#2 Seems amazing to me that she could get past one article. I understand that software exists that allow the education field to identify students who do this kind of thing almost instantly.

Posted by gorb 2014-05-19 01:39|| 2014-05-19 01:39|| Front Page Top

#3 I thought it might be common practice. (?) When I look at the mainstream media, more or less the same stories with similar slants appear worldwide on the same day. Hence I check out sites like Rantburg to read news not otherwise mentioned through other outlets. Being supposedly credible CNN et al might have to appear to react to the plagiarism in an honorable way, using buzz words such as "internal audit". Organizational heads often resign or are dismissed during some type of catastrophic bungling as a form of scapegoating. This begs the question, has there been pieces released by CNN contrary to company line? I note that The Times replaced it's editor last week also, so maybe there's some type of political shift going on.

Posted by Incredulous 2014-05-19 06:11|| 2014-05-19 06:11|| Front Page Top

#4 Cutting staff and you wonder why those that remain do the old 'cut and paste'. If you don't have agents out there in the field, where do you suppose the guys back in the office are getting their fill for the columns or air time?

Posted by Procopius2k 2014-05-19 08:56|| 2014-05-19 08:56|| Front Page Top

#5 Where do you suppose the guys back in the office are getting their fill for the columns or air time?

Mostly from the likes of Associated [with terrorists] Press and Rooters [for terrorism].

Posted by CrazyFool 2014-05-19 11:02|| 2014-05-19 11:02|| Front Page Top

#6 so verbatim rehashing Democrat Talking Points should also be called plagiarism, except we'd have almost no reporters left

Posted by Frank G 2014-05-19 16:01|| 2014-05-19 16:01|| Front Page Top

#7 Look at it from the reporter's point of view. You have to print/air a story everyday. How much "investigative" journalism are you actually going to do?

You have sources who feed you information that become grist for a story. You might call up someone you know from the opposition to "fact check" and to present a "balanced" view but you do not want to antagonize your original source because you will need a story tomorrow. They can always pick a different reporter who is more willing to go with administration talking points.

Perhaps that is what happened here and Fareed ran out of sources willing to talk.

Posted by Squinty 2014-05-19 16:36|| 2014-05-19 16:36|| Front Page Top

#8 Look at it from the reporter's point of view. You have to print/air a story everyday. How much "investigative" journalism are you actually going to do?

It's more a problem with the news organizations. Coming up with news reports and stories costs money. News organizations need content but don't want to spend the money on staff.

Posted by Pappy 2014-05-19 18:23|| 2014-05-19 18:23|| Front Page Top

#9 This...is CNN

Posted by The Voice of Darth Vader 2014-05-19 19:50|| 2014-05-19 19:50|| Front Page Top

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