CNN says it has fired an editor after finding examples of plagiarism in about 50 of her stories.
The company said it had terminated Marie-Louise Gumuchian, who reported from CNN’s London bureau about Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, in an editor’s note published Friday.
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It said it had removed plagiarized passages from some articles, and deleted some altogether. CNN “Reliable Sources” host Brian Stelter tweeted a link to the note Friday morning.
The plagiarism is a black eye for CNN as it attempts to revamp itself under new chief Jeff Zucker. The network has always made the case that even when its ratings lag, it has the highest journalistic standards in cable news.
The firing — and transparency about it — were an attempt to show that when CNN makes mistakes, it fixes them, honestly and publicly. But there’s no getting around the embarrassment of a staffer allegedly plagiarizing dozens of stories, and escaping notice until now.
Here it is in its entirety:
(CNN) — CNN has discovered multiple instances of plagiarism by Marie-Louise Gumuchian, a former CNN news editor. She wrote frequently about international news, writing and reporting about Africa, Europe, and the Middle East from our London bureau.
An unpublished story flagged last week during our editing process led to an internal investigation that uncovered other examples in about 50 published stories, and our investigation is ongoing.
We’ve terminated Gumuchian’s employment with CNN, and have removed the instances of plagiarism found in her pieces. In some cases, we’ve chosen to delete an entire article.
Trust, integrity and simply giving credit where it’s due are among the tenets of journalism we hold dear, and we regret that we published material that did not reflect those essential standards.
We also believe in letting audiences know when we’ve remedied situations that threaten to compromise that trust.
– Meredith Artley, Managing Editor and VP, CNN Digital
– Manuel Perez, Editorial Director, CNN Digital
– Richard T. Griffiths, Senior Editorial Director and VP, CNN