Business Insider's chief executive officer and parent company said Sunday they are satisfied with the fairness and accuracy of a plagiarism accusation against a former Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor who is married to a prominent critic of former Harvard University president Claudine Gay. He said there was.
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 criticized his answers in Congressional hearings on anti-Semitism and publicly campaigned against Gay, who resigned earlier this month because his academic work contained examples of work that was unfairly credited. Expanded.
Through its article, Business Insider raised both the idea of hypocrisy and the possibility that academic fraud 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 will only increase,” Ackman said in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday. “This is what they think is a timely, fair, accurate and well-documented report. Unbelievable.”
Business Insider's first article (January 4) said 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. ” he pointed out.
A second 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's family in such a way is a minor blow, 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.
The business leader reached out to board members of both Business Insider and Axel Springer in protest.
Axel Springer told The New York Times that this raises questions about the motives behind the article and the reporting process, and that the company has promised to conduct a review.
on sunday, Business Insider CEO Barbara Penn releases statement “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.
“At Business Insider, we support and empower our journalists to share newsworthy, fact-based stories with our readers, and we do so with editorial independence.” he writes.
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 serious psychological damage.” he wrote to x“And as an introvert, it was very difficult for her to get through each day.”
Gay wrote in the Times that those campaigning for his ouster “often resorted to lies and human insults rather than reasoned argument.”
Harvard University's first black president said she was the subject of death threats and “called the N-word countless times.”
Business Insider global editor-in-chief Nicholas Carlson had no immediate comment Sunday.
In a memo to staff over the weekend, The Washington Post reported that Carlson made the calls to publish both stories and that he knew the story preparation process was in place. Stated.
