NY Times Adds Correction to Story That ‘Improperly Used’ Wikipedia Lines

The New York Times posted a correction today to an article that, it turns out, plagiarized lines from Wikipedia. Times public editor Margaret Sullivan today went over why reporters should not be doing this, though while she uses the word “plagiarism,” today’s correction does not.

Here’s what the correction reads, in full:

The Inside Art column on July 25, about a planned exhibition of the works of the Renaissance painter Piero di Cosimo, started with a description of the artist’s life and eccentricities. That passage improperly used specific language and details from a Wikipedia article without attribution; it should not have been published in that form. (Editors learned of the problem after publication from a post on FishbowlNY.)

This is only the latest incident of plagiarism to find its way into the news. A U.S. senator and a now-fired BuzzFeed writer recently got in trouble for plagiarism issues of their own.

[h/t TPM]
[image via Haxorjoe]

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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac

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