Suspended Snopes co-founder caught plagiarizing 54 articles

The leftist "fact-checker" website Snopes retracted several dozen articles after David Mikkelson, its co-founder, was snagged plagiarizing 54 articles occurring between 2015 to 2019. BuzzFeed News was the first to expose the scandal of the website. 

[H/T The Blaze]

Mikkelson, also the executive editor reportedly was responsible for "handling everything from researching and writing articles about urban legends to managing the site's technical infrastructure." 

Mikkelson, who founded the fact-checking site in 1994 along with his ex-wife, is now suspended from his own website after the plagiarism claims surfaced, and that's a fact. He used his own name, a pseudonym "Jeff Zarronandia," and "Snopes Staff" as his byline.

Some of the outlets he used for his articles were LA Times, The Guardian, and Reuters, according to BuzzFeed News, who also reports they obtained emails and Slack messages that pointed the finger at Mikkelson.

In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Mikkelson cited ignorance for his plagiarism claiming that he didn't come from a journalism background. But that's like crashing a car into a crowd and say you didn't learn how to drive because you never took a driving lesson.

Snopes' vice president of editorial and managing editor, Doreen Marchionni, suspended Mikkelson from his duties pending a full investigation, but he still remains a 50% shareholder of the propaganda machine.

Snopes plans to retract all of the plagiarized articles, but "the page itself will remain accessible" and feature an editor's note to explain the "source-attribution problem in the original story and link to the original news source(s)."

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