Business Insider Stands By Plagiarism Accusation Against Billionaire's Wife

NEW YORK (AP) — Business Insider’s top executive and parent company said Sunday they were satisfied with the fairness and accuracy of stories that made plagiarism accusations against a former MIT professor who is married to a prominent critic of former Harvard President Claudine Gay.

“We stand by Business Insider and its newsroom,” said a spokesman for Axel Springer, the German media company that owns the publication.

The company had said it would look into the stories about Neri Oxman, a prominent designer, following complaints by her husband, Bill Ackman, a Harvard graduate and CEO of the Pershing Square investment firm. He publicly campaigned against Gay, who resigned earlier this month following criticism of her answers at a congressional hearing on antisemitism and charges that her academic writing contained examples of improperly credited work.

With its stories, Business Insider raised both the idea of hypocrisy and the possibility that academic dishonesty is widespread, even among the nation’s most prominent scholars.

Ackman’s response, and the pressure that a well-connected person placed on the corporate owners of a journalism outlet, raised questions about the outlet’s independence.

Business Insider and Axel Springer’s “liability just goes up and up and up,” Ackman said Sunday in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “This is what they consider fair, accurate and well-documented reporting with appropriate timing. Incredible.”

Business Insider’s first article, on Jan. 4, noted that Ackman had seized on revelations about Gay’s work to back his efforts against her — but that the organization’s journalists “found a similar pattern of plagiarism” by Oxman. A second piece, published the next day, said Oxman had stolen