NBC News issued a letter to its readers Monday admitting that a reporter plagiarized several stories over the past year.
The outlet told readers that 11 stories by the unnamed reporter contained passages from other news organizations without attribution and did “not represent original reporting.” The network’s editorial team placed an editor’s note on each of the plagiarized articles and removed the copy and pasted passages.
“A review by NBC News has found 11 articles written by a reporter over the last year that did not meet our standards for original material,” the note said. “The articles contained passages from other news organizations that were used without attribution. In all cases, the passages were not central to the stories, but instead contained supplemental or background material that did not represent original reporting.”
The plagiarism was seemingly done by political reporter Teaganne Finn, who the network did not outwardly identify in their statement to readers. The outlet discovered two plagiarized passages in her article titled, “Jan. 6 panel reaches deal with White House to defer some document requests” which detailed the Jan. 6 committee’s deal to defer Trump-era document requests in relation to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
“NBC News has determined that two passages in an earlier version of this article—one about the agreement to shield President Trump’s records and another about the authorization given to the National Archives—were not properly attributed to their original source and did not meet our standards for original material,” the editor’s note reads.
NBC News confirmed to the Daily Caller that Finn is no longer employed at the network and that this is the first known plagiarism incident that has occurred at the network. The network discovered the unattributed sentences during a routine editing process. (RELATED: The Rebel Media Apologizes Over Jack Posobiec Plagiarism Allegations)
I’m told that NBC discovered this during a routine editing process and launched a review where other instances were discovered.
The reporter, Teaganne Finn, is no longer with the network.
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) May 2, 2022
The network vowed to earn its readers’ trust and to ensure that its published content meets the “highest standards” of journalism.
“Maintaining the trust of our readers and viewers is essential to NBC News, and our work must always meet the highest standards of our profession,” the note concludes.