AN investigation is being carried out at The Press and Journal following a claim that one of its columns included chunks copied, in one way or another, from an article that appeared in The Guardian.
It follows a feature on reasons to love Winter. Says Stuart Heritage, a column by-lined to Carly Fallon in the P&J includes similar wording and – in the case of one paragraph – exact wording as a piece by him published in The Guardian a week-and-half before. The similarities are itemised by the online content gathering service, Buzzfeed.
One of Heritage’s many tweets today commends the P&J’s editor, Damian Bates: “A very quick email from the editor. Impressively quick, in fact. It’s being investigated.”
And Bates has issued a statement, saying: “Obviously plagiarism – in any form – is totally unacceptable. We take this matter very seriously indeed and we are currently in discussions with the writer concerned.”
