Report: Jami Floyd Resigns From WNYC/New York Amidst Plagiarism Allegations

Floyd (Photo: Matthew Septimus / WNYC)

JAMI FLOYD, the Director of NEW YORK PUBLIC RADIO's Race & Justice Unit, has resigned amidst allegations published in the NEW YORK POST that an internal review at the station determined she wrote 45 articles for WNYC.ORG and GOTHAMIST since 2010 that were partly plagiarized. FLOYD resigned on MONDAY (4/4) and has called a press conference for TODAY at which she is expected to announce plans to sue the station and allege racism and discrimination there. Her profile page remains on the WNYC website as of TUESDAY morning.

A source told the POST that the alleged plagiarism included some entire paragraphs taken from other sites including WIKIPEDIA and summaries of others' work without credit. WNYC posted an editor's note on FRIDAY saying, "WNYC has removed 41 articles from WNYC.ORG and four stories from GOTHAMIST.COM due to violations of our editorial standards. Forty-two of the stories that were removed were found to contain unattributed passages from other sources. The other three stories were published on other websites by the author. No fabricated facts were found in the stories, which were by a single author and published between 2010 and 2021."

The NEW YORK TIMES reported on the pulling of four articles by FLOYD from GOTHAMIST over lifted language last NOVEMBER, and FLOYD at the time acknowledged that she had made unintentional "mistakes" and apologized, but subsequently issued a press release through REPUTATION DOCTOR claiming that the TIMES piece was wrong in claiming that she had been reassigned from the Race & Justice Unit and claimed that the authors of the original articles were not offended and did not think she needed to apologize, and charging that the TIMES reporting was about race because it related how she was not fired but a white reporter who used a paragraph from an AP story with attribution was fired. Another story at the COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW last month noting more articles by FLOYD that included material from other sites prompted the internal review that led to the additional deletion of articles.

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