It may not be as serious as Joe Biden’s cribbing soundbites from UK politician Neil Kinnock or as lazy as Boston Globe columnist Mike Barnicle’s lifting jokes from George Carlin — but the plagiarism pickle over at BuzzFeed wins hands down for unnecessary silliness.
Accused of the journalistic no-no is Benny Johnson, BuzzFeed’s viral politics editor — who was fired late Friday.
His offense wasn’t copying, without crediting, the classics. If only he had. No, his alleged sin was nicking from such mind-numbing sources as Wikipedia, Yahoo! Answers and a Texan Congressman’s self-promoting Web site.
Two Twitter users — @blippoblappo and @crushingbort — blew the whistle on Johnson, linking to an article they posted on Thursday with the headline “Our Bad Media.”
The article began, ironically, by noting how Johnson had just called out the Independent Journal Review for plagiarizing his own piece on George H.W. Bush’s socks.
“Repeat after me,” the article quoted Johnson as tweeting to the IJR. “Copying and pasting someone’s work is called ‘plagiarism.’ ”
The article then details three sins of commission by Johnson himself that fit — all too perfectly — his just-cited definition.
In this case, BuzzFeed’s playing such a prominent role took the cybernoise up a notch or two.
The snarking often addressed the idiocy of plagiarizing when compiling “listicles,” which is BuzzFeed’s bread and butter.
The site’s successful business model came under attack, too.
“In the eyes of many journalists, BuzzFeed is constantly walking a fine line between aggregation, or ‘curation,’ and theft,” Politico’s Dylan Byers wrote.
BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith tweeted an apology after Johnson was canned, saying plagiarism is “a breach of our fundamental responsibility.”