FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, July 20, 2020
CONTACT: press@iowademocrats.org
NYT: A former television reporter running for Congress from Iowa plagiarized passages at least a dozen times.
Hinson’s campaign has blatantly and repeatedly plagiarized over a dozen times, including from Congresswoman Finkenauer’s website
DES MOINES — This morning, the New York Times exposed State Rep. Ashley Hinson’s history of repeatedly plagiarizing in campaign materials, published op eds and more. This report verified that Hinson has stolen sentences word by word over a dozen times from the New York Times, the Des Moines Register, The Hill, CNBC, and even Congresswoman Abby Finkenauer’s website since her campaign began.
Following the report, Hinson wrote on Twitter that “staff responsible will be held accountable” for her campaign’s blatant plagiarism — yet a tweet from her own account posted in April claimed that Hinson herself had written the campaign materials.
The New York Times: A former television reporter running for Congress from Iowa plagiarized passages at least a dozen times.
Key excerpts:
- When Ashley Hinson introduced Mr. Trump during a 2017 rally, she said “I’m what you would call a recovering journalist.” Her recovery apparently did not include maintaining basic standards of offering credit when lifting passages of text from another source, including The New York Times.
- Ms. Hinson, a Republican state representative in Iowa who is running against Representative Abby Finkenauer in what figures to be one of the nation’s most competitive House districts, has lifted verbatim sentences on her campaign website and in published op-eds more than a dozen times since her campaign began last year.
- Ms. Hinson’s website also borrowed exact passages from the Des Moines Register and from The Hill, an outlet that covers Washington; in op-eds, she has taken phrases from CNBC; and her platform on veterans issues uses near-identical language to Ms. Finkenauer, her Democratic opponent, among other instances.
- “I was unaware of the plagiarism when I reviewed drafts presented to me by staff,” Ms. Hinson wrote on Twitter. “As a journalist I take this extremely seriously and am deeply sorry for the mistake. The staff responsible will be held accountable.”