Borrowed and Duplicated': Washington Post Admits Plagiarism

In an editor's note to readers Wednesday, the Washington Posted offered "an apology" for borrowing and duplicating material from the Arizona Republic earlier this month.

In its admission, the paper says a Post reporter lifted material from a report on Tuscon shooter Jared Lee Loughner on March 4, as well as 10 paragraphs from a separate, 15-paragraph story the paper ran on March 10. Although the Post does not note the author's name, both articles were written by Sari Horwitz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist.

“It is The Post’s policy that the use of material from other newspapers or sources must be properly attributed," the editor's note reads.  "The Post apologizes to the Arizona Republic and to its readers for this serious lapse."

Although the editor's note made it sound like Horwitz simply forgot to attribute the material to Arizona Republica, the Post's executive editor later clarified in a statement to Yahoo’s Michael Calderone: “There are no mitigating circumstances for plagiarism."

A note preceding each story online now reads: “This is one of two articles published by The Post online and in its print editions earlier this month that contained substantial material that was borrowed and duplicated, without attribution, from The Arizona Republic newspaper.”