White Privilege: Shaun King Plagiarizes Article, Editor Gets Fired
April 19, 2016
Daniel Greenfield
Shaun King, the Black Lives Matter version of Rachel Dolezal who claims unconvincingly to be black, got a gig with the New York Daily News to rant about white privilege. The Daily News these days is like the Daily Mail but with even less class. But apparently they have editors. The chief function of these editors is to get fired when they can't stop the crazy abuses of News star talent like Shaun King.
Shaun King, the controversial columnist of The New York Daily News, has been accused of plagiarism. The alleged stealing of sources was discovered by The Daily Beast, whose senior editor, Justin Miller, sent a tweet with a link to a story from his publication next to a Daily News column link by King. Both stories were about an African-American who died in prison, allegedly because the jail was ill-equipped to handle the man’s mental illness.
The column by King had two paragraphs that were identical, word-for-word, with what appeared in The Daily Beast piece, written by Kate Briquelet. King’s piece even included a typographical error that was also in Briquelet’s original piece. But as originally published, the piece by King did not offer attribution to Briquelet, and so gave the appearance of being King’s own original writing.
So the Daily News relied on Shaun King's white privilege and fired an editor instead.
In an interview, King told CNNMoney that the appearance of plagiarism in the article was the result of errors by an editor. King said he provided proper attribution in his drafts, but that the citations and quotation marks were removed by an editor without his knowledge.
"Someone really f****ed up here," King said of the editor. "Someone dropped the ball."
The New York Daily News has fired one of its editors for removing attribution from columns by writer Shaun King, which made it appear as though King had plagiarized the works of others.
On Tuesday, Daily News editor-in-chief Jim Rich told CNNMoney that the editor in question had "made a series of egregious and inexplicable errors," and on at least three occasions "deleted attribution that made it appear passages from Shaun King's columns were not properly credited."
Boy that editor really messed up and for some inexplicable reason removed attribution from Shaun King's articles. But here's the problem with that theory.
Why was Shaun King quoting two paragraphs of someone else's articles at all? He was hired to write a column. It's one thing to quote a sentence or two from another article. But there's no reason in the age of the internet to quote that much content at all in a column, as opposed to a blog post.
Furthermore the "attribution deleted" excuse is routinely used by plagiarists. It may occasionally be true, but not when it keeps happening.
So theory 1
1. A Daily News editor was plagiarizing material on behalf of Shaun King
2. Shaun King is a liar
Shaun King has also been affiliated with the controversial organization, Black Lives Matter. Last December, The Daily Beast reported that while King raised millions of dollars to support black families that lost members to police violence, “much of the largess either went into failed projects, King’s own pockets, or is unaccounted for.”
That would be when he broke up with Black Lives Matter. I believe.
And, oh yes, Shaun King, the son of two white parents is black, because his mother supposedly had an affair.
A prominent Black Lives Matter activist accused of misrepresenting his race has addressed the reports, saying the man listed on his birth certificate is not his biological father.
King has identified himself in interviews as the biracial son of a white mother and an African-American father. The conservative websites uncovered mug shots and criminal records identifying the person listed on his birth certificate as King’s father, Jeffery Wayne King, as white.
These misunderstandings just keep happening to Shaun. And he keeps getting away with them. I blame White Privilege.
