CNN said it fired a news editor after an ongoing internal investigation uncovered more than 50 instances of plagiarism.
Marie-Louise Gumuchian wrote about international news out of the London bureau, reporting on Africa, Europe and the Middle East, the cable news outfit said on Friday.
“We’ve terminated Gumuchian’s employment with CNN, and have removed the instances of plagiarism found in her pieces. In some cases, we’ve chosen to delete an entire article,” CNN said in a statement posted on its website.
“Trust, integrity and simply giving credit where it’s due are among the tenets of journalism we hold dear, and we regret that we published material that did not reflect those essential standards,” the statement read.
CNN, part of media giant Time Warner, said one problem story was flagged last week during routine editing, leading to the probe.
Gumuchian’s most recent story that appears on CNN.com was on pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine.
She worked at Reuters before she joined CNN roughly six months ago. CNN’s investigation showed that Gumuchian mostly lifted material from her old employer, according to journalism site Poynter.org, citing a CNN source.
“It’s kind of ballsy — don’t you think your old colleagues might look to see what you were doing at your new job?” the CNN source told Poynter.
A spokesman told Poynter that Reuters is reviewing Gumuchian’s work.