WUSA, the CBS-affiliate in Washington, DC, has removed a story from the station’s website after learning that the copy was identical to a Washington Post article on the same subject.
The articles were about Robert Lederer, the mayor of Fairfax, announcing his resignation. The WUSA story went up about three hours after the Post article, according to Poynter.
“An assignment editor saw the piece in the Post and cut and pasted the body of information into an email,” WUSA president and general manager Allan Horlick told Poynter. That email was then forwarded to Ashley Jennings, a web producer at the station, who thought it was a press release to be rewritten and published on the station’s website.
Several paragraphs appeared word-for-word in the two pieces. Jennings told Poynter that the identical copy was accidental and that she was working on rewriting five press releases during a 40-minute window. The post has since been removed from the WUSA website.