Buzzfeed Editor Caught Copying Text

Two pseudonymous Twitter users on Thursday pointed out that several posts from BuzzFeed’s Viral Politics editor, Benny Johnson, have lifted text directly from Yahoo! Answers without credit. In his article titled “7 Cities That Defy Terrorism,” for example, Johnson copies a Yahoo! Answers post that reads, “Throughout the London Blitz, over a million incendiaries and around 50,000 high explosive bombs were dropped on London.” Johnson’s version of the sentence, written four years later, reads, “Throughout the London Blitz, over a million incendiaries and around 50,000 high explosive bombs were dropped on London by Nazi bombers.” BuzzFeed has since removed the passage, replaced it with more original wording, and issued a correction at the bottom. In an email to Gawker, BuzzFeed Editor in Chief Ben Smith called the mistakes “serious failures” but defended Johnson, saying he is “one of the Web’s deeply original writers, as is clear from his body of work.”