Benny Johnson, the former “viral politics” editor of BuzzFeed, has taken a job at a news site that he once accused of plagiarism, an attack that ironically led to an investigation into his own plagiarism and got him fired last year.
Johnson announced on Tuesday that he was “thrilled” to join the Independent Journal Review as creative content director, after Politico reported the news.
He was less than thrilled with IJ Review last July, when he accused the site of plagiarizing a listicle he had written for BuzzFeed about George H.W. Bush’s socks.
“Repeat after me: Copying and pasting someone’s work is called ‘plagiarism,'” Johnson tweeted at the time.
But it was Johnson’s accusation against IJ Review that prompted the Twitter media watchdogs @blippoblappo and @crushingbort to investigate Johnson’s own portfolio. They uncovered several instances of plagiarism and got Johnson fired.
Within two days, Johnson’s then-employer BuzzFeed published an apology to its readers, which announced that an internal review spurred on by the Twitter duo’s investigation had uncovered “41 instances of sentences or phrases copied word for word from other sites.”
Johnson landed on his feet a few months later at the conservative magazine National Review Online, where he has worked as social media director since. But he will apparently be leaving the magazine.
Commenting on Johnson’s new gig at IJ Review, NRO’s editor Rich Lowry told Politico, “we wish Benny all the best.”
BuzzFeed once published a profile of the IJ Review, in a post titled “The Right Wing Has Its Own Upworthy And You Won’t Believe How Well It’s Doing.“
Repeat after me: Copying and pasting someone’s work is called “plagiarism” http://t.co/0Ik1dPXq1O
— Benny (@bennyjohnson) July 23, 2014
Thrilled to accept the position as Creative Content Director at @ijreview.
— Benny (@bennyjohnson) February 4, 2015
Seems like they just recycle these assholes. Sort of like the politician, operative, or staff member that got caught breaking the law, may also have gone to jail, and is now on as a paid political consultant for some cable TV news program. Its all of a similar lowering of the bar when it comes to our news.
No standards = No general principles upholding the integrity of the news.
Carry on assholes, carry on.