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Reports of plagiarism against the academic Neri Oxman, wife of billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, are “accurate and well documented”, the chief executive of Business Insider has told staff.
In a memorandum sent to Business Insider reporters on Sunday, a copy of which was seen by the Financial Times, chief executive Barbara Peng said an internal review into the financial news website’s reporting this month — which led to a war of words on social media between Ackman and the platform — had found it to be rigorous and fair.
“We are a journalism organisation with high standards and a commitment to truth and fairness,” wrote Peng. “There was no unfair bias or personal, political, and/or religious motivation in the pursuit of the stories.”
Axel Springer, the German media conglomerate that owns Business Insider, confirmed the memo was accurate.
It said: “We note that Business Insider’s chief executive has published a statement on the matter. Axel Springer stands by Business Insider and its newsroom.”
In two reports on January 4 and 5, Business Insider claimed Oxman’s doctoral thesis had been “marred by plagiarism”. Oxman is a former professor of material sciences at MIT.
The claims drew an explosive response from Ackman, who spent much of December locked in a high-profile battle to unseat the president of Harvard University, Claudine Gay, in part over allegations of plagiarism.
Ackman had been angry with Gay since her controversial comments to a US congressional committee investigation into campus antisemitism in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel in October.
Asked whether threats of genocide against Jewish people made by students would be in violation of Harvard’s code of conduct, Gay gave an equivocal response that drew widespread condemnation.
When claims of plagiarism against her surfaced weeks later, Ackman — a prominent Harvard donor — led a campaign online to force her from office. She resigned early this month.
Following Business Insider’s claims against her, Oxman apologised on social media platform X for errors she had made in not clearly identifying quotations in her work, but said she had properly credited all original sources at the end of paragraphs and in her thesis’s bibliography.
Ackman escalated the disagreement, however, and attacked Business Insider’s reporting, questioning the integrity of the stories’ authors and accusing the platform’s owner, Axel Springer, of making misleading statements.
On X he also sought to draw in private equity firm KKR, Axel Springer’s largest shareholder.
“How can KKR be the ultimate controlling shareholder of a totally unethical and sleazy media company,” he railed.
Journalists at Business Insider were themselves angered by Axel Springer’s decision to order an internal review into the reporting as a result of the controversy.
Executives at the media company nevertheless hope the findings of the report, emailed to staff today, will reassure them — and deter Ackman from further attacks.
“The process we went through to report, edit and review the stories was sound, as was the timing. Through their representative, Oxman and Ackman responded that they had made the decision not to comment,” Peng wrote in the memo to staff. “We stand by our newsroom and our reporting, which will continue onward.”
A spokesperson for Ackman and Oxman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the internal review’s findings.