New York Daily News writer Shaun King has been called out for plagiarism after he copied a blog post verbatim and posted it on his massively popular Facebook page without giving attribution to its true author.
In a post on King’s Facebook page on Sunday, Carlos Miller, who operates the blog “Photography Is Not A Crime,” wrote: “Shaun King, please link to my article if you are going to cut and paste my article into your FB post. I’m sure as a writer, you understand.”
King has a huge Facebook following of more than 184,000 users. That fan base generates tons of traffic for his posts at The Daily News, where King reportedly earns a six-figure salary.
In his article, Miller detailed a video recently released by the Los Angeles County sheriff’s department showing deputies shooting 23-year-old Noel Aguilar in the back while he was on the ground.
King copied Miller’s blog post word by word and passed it on to his followers as his own.
Shaun King caught cutting and pasting other people's articles on to his FB like ther his… pic.twitter.com/p1ST3bZ5P7
— SacKat (@sachibub10) December 21, 2015
This is just the latest controversy to befall King, who gained national attention as a Black Lives Matter activist following the shooting death of Michael Brown last year. As The Daily Caller has reported, King has made inconsistent comments about charities he’s founded. One organization for which he began soliciting donations last year was never actually registered as a charity. After TheDC’s report, King announced that he was returning donations given to that organization and to another he started this summer.
King also claimed in interviews in 2013 that a social media company he co-founded called Upfront Media was going to contribute a portion of its revenue to an affiliated charity. But King’s business partner told TheDC in a phone interview that the charity was never actually created. (RELATED: Charities Touted By Shaun King Appear To Never Have Existed)
King also appears to have falsely claimed that as a high school student in Kentucky in 1995 he was the victim of an anti-black hate crime. A police report from the incident and the detective who investigated the matter undermined the notion that King was the victim of a hate crime.
Further, while King has made racist statements about white male gun owners, the columnist-activist was fired from his job at Morehouse College in 2006 after brandishing his own firearm while trying to drive through a crowd gathered for a campus block party. (RELATED: Shaun King Was Fired From Morehouse College After He Brandished A Gun)
King had not responded to Miller’s accusation of plagiarism by press time.
Update: King deleted the Facebook post in question sometime after this article was published.