[ad_1]
NEW YORK (AP) — Business Insider’s chief executive and parent company on Sunday questioned the fairness of an article accusing plagiarism against a former Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who is married to a prominent critic of former Harvard University president Claudine Gay. He said he was satisfied with the accuracy.
A spokesperson for Axel Springer, the German media company that owns the publication, said: “We stand behind Business Insider and its newsroom.”
The company said it would investigate articles about famed designer Neri Oxman following complaints from her husband, Bill Ackman, a Harvard graduate and CEO of investment firm Pershing Square. It was announced. He campaigned publicly against gays. resigned Earlier this month, her answers at a Congressional hearing on anti-Semitism were criticized, after her academic work was accused of containing examples of unfairly credited work.
Through its article, Business Insider raised both the idea of hypocrisy and the possibility that academic dishonesty is widespread even among the nation’s most prominent academics.
Mr. Ackman’s reaction and the pressure from some well-connected executives at a journalism publisher raised questions about the publisher’s independence.
Business Insider and Axel Springer’s “responsibility is only going to increase,” Ackman said Sunday. in post on X (formerly Twitter). “This is what they think is a timely, fair, accurate and well-documented report. Unbelievable.”
Business Insiders first articlenoted on January 4 that Ackman seized on revelations about gay activism to support his own anti-gay activism, but that the organization’s journalists “discovered a similar pattern of plagiarism” by Oxman.a 2ndThe article, published the next day, said Oxman stole sentences and paragraphs from his 2010 MIT doctoral thesis from Wikipedia, fellow academics, and technical documents.
Ackman complained that attacking someone else’s family in such a way is petty, and said he gave Business Insider reporters less than two hours to respond to the accusations. He suggested that the editors there were anti-Zionists. Oxman was born in Israel.
Business leaders reached out to board members of both Business Insider and Axel Springer in protest. In response, Axel Springer told The New York Times that questions had been raised about the motives behind the story and the reporting process, and the company promised to conduct a review.
Business Insider CEO Barbara Peng issued a statement on Sunday saying there was “no unfair bias or personal, political or religious motivation in pursuing this story.”
Mr. Peng said the article was newsworthy and that Mr. Oxman, known to the public as a prominent intellectual, was a suitable subject. The story is “accurate and the facts are well documented,” Peng said.
“Business Insider supports and empowers journalists to share newsworthy, fact-based stories with our readers, and we do so with editorial independence.” Peng wrote.
Business Insider did not say who reviewed the results.
Ackman said his wife admitted that four quotation marks and one footnote were missing from the 330-page paper. He said the article could have “literally killed” his wife if it weren’t for the support of his family and friends.
“She has suffered severe psychological damage,” he said. I wrote to X“And as an introvert, it was very difficult for her to get through each day.”
Gay for her part wrote in the Times Those campaigning for her ouster “often used lies and insults to humanity rather than reasoned argument”. Harvard University’s first black president said she was the subject of death threats and that “she was called the N-word countless times.”
Business Insider global editor-in-chief Nicholas Carlson was not immediately available for comment Sunday. A memo to his staff last weekend read: reported by Carlson said he called to publish both stories and knew the process for preparing them was in place, according to the Washington Post.
[ad_2]
Source link
