Calling Out the Plagiarist

Mike Krafcik

As most you know, not much pisses me off.

But, when I see another media outlet lift a story from FTVLive with no credit or recognition to us that burns me up.

That being said, I can totally get how this Reporter feels:

Malachi Barrett is a newspaper reporter for MLive in Kalamazoo.

He did a story on a far-right West Michigan sheriff who has been telling people to take a stand against President Biden. Here is a link to that story.

A few hours later, WWMT (Sinclair) Reporter Mike Krafcik published a similar story---two sentences were copied verbatim from the paper story and Malachai called WWMT and Mike Krafcik out on Twitter:

I spent a week researching constitutional sheriffs, so it was surprising to see @wwmtnews publish a similar report on the same day mine ran. Not just similar, @Mkrafcik lifted lines straight out of my story.

It's dishonest, lazy and not the first time.https://t.co/1vOGfAvsgW pic.twitter.com/JnaF1AwF1a

— Malachi Barrett (@PolarBarrett) February 9, 2021

After his post, the WWMT's story was updated to take out the plagiarized lines but no editor's note and no apology.