Categories: OLD Media Moves

Two Bloomberg stories a year apart with nearly identical leads

More than a year ago, on Oct. 31, 2013, Bloomberg News reporters Mariko Yasu and Gracue Huang wrote a story about Sony Corp.

The lead was:

Sony (6758) Corp. President Kazuo Hirai is paying the price for trying to revive ailing TV and smartphone sales, with more than $2 billion of market value lost today, as his counterpart at Panasonic (6752) Corp. benefits from paring those units as it struggles to compete.

On Sept. 17, 2014, nearly a year later, Bloomberg News reporter Sonali Basak wrote a story about Sony.

Her lead was:

Sony Corp. (6758) is paying a price for clinging to smartphones and televisions while competitor Panasonic Corp. prospers after pulling back from those products sooner.

The two stories with extremely similar leads has caught the attention of some within Bloomberg. One emailed Talking Biz News and said, “It is plagiarism when different reporters at the same company write the same lede one year apart?”

And a former Bloomberg News reporter who was asked to review the two stories by Talking Biz News noted, “Typically for prerelease stories as you know you would look at the past coverage for the template.”

A Bloomberg News spokesman, however, said it’s  “a stretch” to call the second lead plagiarism and added, “We publish more than 5,000 stories per day and any similarity is coincidental. Suggesting otherwise ignores the context of the full stories that describe nearly identical circumstances around each year’s earnings.”

Talking Biz News makes no determination about whether the second lead is plagiarism and simply presents the leads and the comments to foster discussion on the matter.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

View Comments

  • I'm a regular reader of this blog and generally appreciate all the updates on what's happening in the industry.

    But I think you've made a mistake by posting this and set a terrible example for the students and professional journalists who are your readers. In the days of immutable search engine results, this blog post based on vague concerns from unidentified critics will forever be attached to this reporter’s name, potentially damaging her professional reputation for years to come with a ridiculous accusation.

    The phrase “paying the price” is clichéd, and it's far from ideal to have such similar ledes on these stories. However, nothing here is suggestive of plagiarism -- it just shows that the phrase is overused and the writing or editing may have been sloppy.

    Even if the lede had been copied word for word, any accusation of plagiarism is downright absurd given that both stories were written by the same news organization.

    The most disturbing part of this blog post is the final paragraph, in which you try to recuse yourself from any responsibility for a serious accusation by saying you aren’t making any “determinations” on the matter, when in fact, that’s exactly what you’ve done by publishing a post like this.

    I hope you consider making an apology to the reporter you slandered and deleting this post.

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