NY Magazine Revises Daily Wire Hit Piece After Plagiarism Accusation from Washington Post Reporter

AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File

New York Magazine revised an article after a Washington Post reporter noticed its lede was awfully similar to one he wrote for his own story.

On Thursday morning, Drew Harwell of The Washington Post took a pair of screenshots and posted them on X. Included in the screenshots were the ledes for stories both he and New York Magazine wrote covering the supposed fall of Ben Shapiro’s media empire.

“The lede of our Shapiro story on Saturday and the lede of the @NYMag story today,” Harwell wrote in the tweet.

Harwell’s lede ran as follows:

The conservative media company Daily Wire was once a star of the MAGA digital universe, dominating social media feeds and podcast apps with a blend of “anti-woke” commentary, viral Facebook posts and culture-war stunts.

In the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, the company co-founded by conservative pundit Ben Shapiro ranked as Facebook’s top English-language publisher for three straight months. Its sarcastic news items on then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s salon visits gained millions more views than the websites of Fox News, CNN and the New York Times.

New York Magazine’s lede, on the other hand, read:

There was a time, not very long ago, when Ben Shapiro could reasonably call himself the king of all conservative media.

His company, the Daily Wire, dominated social-media feeds and podcast apps; in the run-up to the 2020 election, it was ranked as Facebook’s top English-language publisher for three straight months. Virality seemed to be the Daily Wire’s birthright: Scathing news items on Nancy Pelosi’s salon visits during the pandemic racked up millions more views than the websites of Fox News, CNN, and the New York Times.

Shortly after Harwell posted the tweet, New York Magazine revised its lede to credit him for the observation about Shapiro’s success. The updated lede read:

In 2020, as Drew Harwell at the Washington Post notes, Shapiro’s media company, the Daily Wire, “ranked as Facebook’s top English-language publisher for three straight months. Its sarcastic news items on then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s salon visits gained millions more views than the websites of Fox News, CNN and the New York Times.” Shapiro himself was ubiquitous, a right-wing star who had risen to fame before Donald Trump and seamlessly adapted to the MAGA takeover of the Republican Party. He was a digital battering ram against the Democrats and the progressive left. He seemed guaranteed, like Fox itself, for an indefinite run at the top of the media heap.

At the bottom of New York Magazine’s story, an editor’s note was also included.

“This story has been updated to credit reporting from the Washington Post,” the note read.

In a statement sent to Mediaite, New York Magazine confirmed it was reviewing the incident, saying:

After the similarities were pointed out on X, we updated the piece to credit and directly quote from the Washington Post and acknowledged the change in a note on the piece. We are reviewing the matter.

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