Bloomberg campaign amends policy plans after report of plagiarism
Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s campaign added citations and links to its policy proposals and accompanying fact sheets after a news report found that it had lifted passages from media outlets and nonprofits.
The Intercept on Thursday reported that Bloomberg’s campaign had used exact language from news articles, research papers and opinion pieces for at least eight of its policy plans and fact sheets, without citing its sources.
Some sections were pulled from two organizations Bloomberg co-founded, Everytown for Gun Safety and Building America’s Future Education Fund, according to the Intercept.
After the Intercept asked the campaign for comment on Wednesday, the campaign on Thursday removed and reposted its infrastructure plan and edited its other fact sheets.
The campaign did not deny it plagiarized to the Intercept.
Julie Wood, a spokeswoman for Bloomberg, said in a statement provided to CNN that the Intercept story is “about several lines among hundreds of pages of background documents that provide context for reporters, not policy plans themselves.”
“Internal drafts of these fact sheets included footnotes, which should have, but didn’t, appear on the web versions or what was emailed to reporters,” Wood said.
She said that the campaign has since added the citations and links to these documents.
“For sourcing, we often look to the organizations that Mike has led or worked with in the past, like the City of New York and Building America’s Future,” Wood said.
In June, former Vice President Joe Biden’s presidential campaign amended its climate change policy proposal after it was pointed out on Twitter and by The Daily Caller, a conservative news outlet, that some of the plan’s language mirrored that of progressive organizations.
Biden’s first run for president was derailed in 1987 after he was accused of copying a British politician’s speech and admitted to plagiarizing in law school.
