A note to our readers

By Robyn Tomlin

Updated July 14, 2022 3:29 PM

Editor’s Note: Anne Blythe filed a lawsuit against The News & Observer Publishing Co. and Robyn Tomlin challenging the accuracy of the statements made below. The case was settled out of court. The N&O maintains the accuracy of the statements below.

To our readers:

Recently, a writer from another publication complained that one of our stories included passages taken from one of her published stories without attribution.

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A review of that article raised concerns, and we subsequently examined more than 600 stories published since January 2016 by staff writer Anne Blythe. We found at least a dozen that contained phrases, sentences or, in some cases, whole paragraphs, lifted from other publications.

Anne has been with The News & Observer and our affiliated publications for more than 30 years. She has been a treasured colleague who has done some important work, but plagiarism and inadequate attribution are a fundamental violation of trust. As such, we have decided to part ways.

We are appending a note to each of these online stories (listed below) explaining that information was improperly taken from sources without attribution. We will add disclosures to any other stories that surface and are shown to have similar flaws.

Journalism is a daily act of faith. It’s a contract between our journalists and you, the reader, that is built on a foundation of trust that we will produce stories we believe to be both accurate and original.

While we rely on other writers and publications to inform our research and reporting process, we have an obligation to attribute facts and information that we glean from those sources and to ensure that the words we write and publish are our own.

We take violations of our core values seriously, and I apologize to both our readers and to the writers and publications from whose work passages were taken.

Robyn Tomlin

Executive Editor

Stories:

NC sues drugmaker accused of bribing doctors to prescribe powerful opioid spray

Should bosses be able to pocket the tips of servers, bartenders and hair stylists?

After an inmate’s long fight, NC prisons ordered to treat his views like other faiths

NC attorney general sues Trump over separating parents and kids, asks if any are housed here

‘Families Belong Together’: Raleigh crowds protest Trump’s separation and detention policies

Supreme Court upholds part of Stanford law professor’s redistricting plan for NC

With Kennedy gone from Supreme Court, what’s next for NC gerrymandering case?

Rare red wolf is found dead in NC; reward offered to find shooter

DACA recipients rally in NC: ‘We were not born illegal. ...We are here to stay.’