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Business Insider story on Harvard antagonist’s wife draws owner’s scrutiny
The Axel Springer statement prompted concern from some reporters over what it said about Business Insider's future ability to pursue investigations.
Business Insider and its German parent company appear to be at odds over its reporting on plagiarism allegations against the wife of a high-profile hedge fund manager.
The financial news site published two stories last week alleging that Neri Oxman, a prominent former Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor, had plagiarized repeatedly in her academic work, including lifting from Wikipedia more than a dozen times in her dissertation.
Those stories came after her husband, billionaire investor Bill Ackman, spent weeks pressuring his alma mater, Harvard University, to oust its president – initially over his contention that she had mishandled incidents of antisemitism on campus but later over reports that she had committed plagiarism earlier in her career. At one point, Ackman wrote that a Harvard student who committed “much less” plagiarism than Claudine Gay would be forced out of the university. Gay resigned from the presidency last week.
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But when Business Insider raised plagiarism concerns about his wife’s work, Ackman excoriated the publication, accusing it of unethical journalism, promising to review its writers’ work and predicting that it would “go bankrupt and be liquidated.” In one social media post, he implied that Business Insider’s investigations editor (whom he called “a known anti-Zionist”) may have been “willing to lead this attack” because Oxman is Israeli.
Neither Ackman nor Oxman, whose companies didn’t respond to requests for comment, have pointed to any factual errors in the articles.
Still, Ackman’s complaints seemed to get the attention of Axel Springer, the German media giant that owns Business Insider. On Sunday, the company released an unusual statement saying it would “review the processes” that led up to the articles’ publication, while acknowledging that the stories were not factually wrong.
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“While the facts of the reports have not been disputed, over the past few days questions have been raised about the motivation and the process leading up to the reporting – questions that we take very seriously,” the statement read.
Business Insider staffers were surprised by the Axel Springer statement, which many had not realized was coming until a New York Times reporter shared it online, according to a Business Insider employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly. A person familiar with Axel Springer’s operations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve company confidences disputed that, saying Business Insider was involved in the drafting of the statement.
In a Sunday afternoon email to employees that was reviewed by The Washington Post, Business Insider global editor in chief Nicholas Carlson appeared to push back on the idea that the stories needed a review. Carlson wrote that he would “welcome” the review but argued for the news value of the stories given Oxman’s position as what he called a “well-known academic” and start-up founder.
“I made the call to publish both these stories,” Carlson wrote. “I stand by our story and the work that went into it. I know that our process was sound. I know our newsroom’s motivations are truth and accountability.”
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Business Insider has a history of reporting aggressively on the wealthy and powerful, including a 2022 story alleging that Elon Musk exposed himself to a flight attendant, which Musk called a “politically motivated hit piece.” At least publicly, that reputation hasn’t been an issue for Axel Springer, which purchased the site in 2015 for $450 million and also owns Politico.
But the dispute over the Oxman stories appears to touch upon an issue of major importance to Axel Springer and its CEO, Mathias Döpfner: Israel.
The company supports Israel openly in a way that would be unusual for a nonpartisan American media firm. Axel Springer employees in Germany – though not at its U.S. properties – must sign a mission statement that affirms Israel’s right to exist, among other issues. In 2021, the Israeli flag flew for a week in front of the company’s offices after Döpfner mandated it as a statement against antisemitism, telling anyone who had a problem with the flag to leave the company.
The person familiar with Axel Springer’s discussions said company leaders are concerned that the reporting on Oxman could have been antisemitic or anti-Zionist – even though it consists primarily of straightforward comparisons between Oxman’s publications and the texts she allegedly plagiarized from.
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While Ackman hasn’t raised factual issues with the articles, he has claimed that the outlet didn’t give him and his wife enough time to comment on the second story, about Wikipedia plagiarism, with a space of roughly two hours on late Friday afternoon between when his spokesman was asked for comment and when the story was published. But Ackman first went public with the Wikipedia allegations roughly an hour before the story was published by posting on social media about the impending article, which may have affected Business Insider’s publication schedule.
While Ackman boosted the plagiarism allegations against Gay, he has questioned whether the lifting of numerous paragraphs from Wikipedia can even count as plagiarism. In a 5,100-word series of posts on X on Saturday night, Ackman compared some forms of plagiarism to spelling errors, saying it’s important to consider whether plagiarism is “pervasive” in an academic’s work.
“It does not strike me as plagiarism, nor do I think it takes anything away from her work,” he wrote of his wife’s alleged Wikipedia plagiarism.
The Axel Springer statement prompted concern from some reporters over what it said about Business Insider’s future ability to pursue investigations. In a post on social media, Julia Black, a former Business Insider reporter, said she was “extremely disturbed” and concerned that reporters covering the wealthy wouldn’t be supported by the company.
“I really hope this can become a mistake we learn from rather than a new precedent,” Black wrote.
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