Former Biden Speechwriter Accuses NY Times of Stealing News Startup’s Pollution Reporting Without Attribution

Hunterbrook, an investigative outlet, accused The New York Times on Sunday of improperly using elements from its earlier reporting in a front-page investigation into former President Donald Trump's environmental rollbacks. The allegations centered on similarities in pollution modeling, photographs, and sources. The Times' Saturday report examined how Trump exempted over 200 industrial facilities from stricter clean-air regulations.

Hunterbrook alleges that certain sections of the Times' article closely mirror two investigations it published months earlier into chemical pollution at plants in Texas and Virginia. The Times' article now includes an acknowledgment of Hunterbrook's prior coverage, though it does not explicitly credit the outlet's specific findings or methodologies.

Hunterbrook highlighted its May investigation into a chemical accident at Sterilization Services of Virginia and its February probe into Indorama Ventures' Texas plant, which received a federal pollution exemption despite past releases. The outlet shared side-by-side photos of a Texas home, seemingly taken from similar angles, capturing the house and the industrial smokestacks.

Both images featured the house in the foreground and smokestacks in the background. Hunterbrook also noted the use of identical quotes from former EPA official Joseph Goffman. Its publisher, Sam Koppelman, stated that his team had previously raised concerns with the Times and questioned the newspaper's explanation for the similarities.

Koppelman emphasized that while the Times' story was commendable, the specific coincidences suggested imitation rather than attribution. The Times acknowledged Hunterbrook's previous coverage in its investigation, pointing out that pollution concerns surrounding the facilities had been previously reported by organizations like ProPublica and Hunterbrook.

However, the timing of the acknowledgment and whether it was initially included or added later remains unclear. The Times claimed its journalists reviewed over 10,000 pages of government documents and interviewed more than 70 people, citing the same publicly available sources as Hunterbrook. TheWrap reached out to The New York Times for comment but did not receive a response at the time of publication.