Toby Harnden, the managing editor of the conservative Washington Examiner, apologized Sunday for what he said was his inadvertent inclusion of several paragraphs from a New York Times story in an Examiner story by Joel Gehrke, a foreign affairs reporter for the website.
NBC News’ David Gura called out what he identified as “egregious plagiarism” in the Examiner piece on Sunday morning, showing that several paragraphs in the piece were copied word-for-word from the Times, with slight stylistic changes like omitting the Times’ use of “Mr.”
In a correction Harnden posted at the top of Gehrke’s article, “Khashoggi crisis is a reckoning for Jared Kushner,” he said the paragraphs had been inadvertently included after he “put a note, in an unpublished story file, that included a section from a story by the New York Times.” That note, including the text from the Times, Harnden wrote, “was not clear, however, and the reporter thought I had rewritten part of his story.”
“The material from the New York Times was then subsequently mistakenly published in error and without any attribution.”
See Gura’s comparison of the Times’ report and the since-edited Examiner report below:
Am I the first to spot this egregious plagiarism in the @dcexaminer (https://t.co/k99Eka647b), by @Joelmentum, of this @nytimes piece by @MarkLandler, @ewong, and @EricSchmittNYT: https://t.co/x2UTuaP8BH? (Screen shots follow.)
— David Gura (@davidgura) October 14, 2018
— David Gura (@davidgura) October 14, 2018
— David Gura (@davidgura) October 14, 2018
— David Gura (@davidgura) October 14, 2018
— David Gura (@davidgura) October 14, 2018
