Gregg Jarrett’s Biography Lifted from Wikipedia 1


UPDATE: After the publication of this article, the About page has been pulled down. We have changed the below link to a saved PDF of the now former About page.

UPDATE 2: Following the change on the Gregg Jarrett website, Jarrett responded further to TKNN:

After I saw the tweets you sent me from my verified account, I contacted the person who, a year ago, had helped me with my Twitter account. I asked if he had also created a webpage on my behalf and he said he did. I told him he could not use language from Wikipedia and asked him to please remove the language from the page. As I stated before, I did not create the webpage and did not see it until today. However, since it was created for my benefit, I am in the process of taking control of it, revising it, and updating it.

However, if this statement it is true it means that Jarrett had someone help him post to his Twitter account (not in creating it, the account has been around since 2009). He then went and created a website for Jarrett without ever telling Jarrett. The person also went as far as to claim in the footer that the website belonged to Jarrett and used Jarrett's first person nouns (e.g. writing "Watch my other recent appearances at foxnews.com"). The person also posted tweets linking to the website that Jarrett did not know about from Jarrett's verified Twitter account and Jarrett did not know about those tweets as well. Jarrett also never realized those tweets were sent nor that the website existed until TKNN contacted him about them.

We asked for the identity of the man that created Jarrett's website, but have not heard back.

(The original article is below)

The About page of Fox News personality Gregg Jarrett's website appears to have been lifted from the Biography section of Garrett's Wikipedia page. While the footnotes and a "[citation needed]" footnote were removed, the rest of the biography was lifted verbatim, including the links to other Wikipedia pages.

In an email to TKNN, Jarrett denied the plagarization, saying, "I have never plagiarized anything from Wikipedia." When TKNN asked why the page matched the Wikipedia section verbatim, he responded, "This is the first time I have seen 'thegreggjarrett.com'. I’ve never heard of it… and I certainly didn’t create it." However, Jarrett's verified Twitter account has posted links to the website he claimed to not know about on several times (screenshots are also posted below).

Jarrett About Page

Gregg Jarrett was born in Los Angeles and raised in nearby San Marino, California, graduating from San Marino High School in 1973. He graduated magna cum laude from Claremont Men’s College in 1977 with a degree in political science. He graduated from law school at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, in 1980, and worked as a defense attorney for several years in San Francisco with the firm of Gordon & Rees LLP. He maintains his California bar license and has taught law as an adjunct professor at New York Law School and lectured at other law schools.

Jarrett joined the Fox News Channel in November 2002. He co-anchors weekend newscasts with Heather Childers and serves as a substitute anchor weekdays for America’s Newsroom (in for Bill Hemmer), Happening Now (in for Jon Scott), and Shepard Smith Reporting for (in for Shepard Smith). He is also a correspondent for the network’s one-hour documentaries, and he serves as a legal analyst for both FNC and the Fox Business Network. Although he lacks a journalism degree, he covered the Iraq War as a correspondent for Fox based in Baghdadfrom May through July, 2003. Embedded with the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division, he was among the first to report from Fallujah.

Prior to joining Fox, Jarrett worked at MSNBC as an anchor and correspondent. He was anchoring the morning of September 11, 2001 during the 9/11 attacks. He also served as a correspondent covering the Second Intifada in November and December 2001, reporting and anchoring newscasts from Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Jarrett reported “live” from the Ben Yehuda Street bombing in Jerusalem on December 1, 2001 when two suicide bombers and a car bomb killed 13 people, including many children, and injured 188 others.

Jarrett also worked at Court TV (the network now known as TruTV) for eight years, serving as the anchor of Prime Time Justice. He hosted the network’s nationally syndicated half-hour magazine show, Inside America’s Courts, which was seen daily on broadcast stations (NBC in New York City and Los Angeles) and weekends on CNBC. He was a main anchor for the O.J. Simpson murder trial on location in Los Angeles in 1995, and he covered other major trials including the Menendez brothers, William Kennedy Smith, Jeffrey Dahmer, Rodney King, Marv Albert, and former au pair Louise Woodward. His weekly legal column, syndicated by Knight Ridder/Tribune Media, was distributed to 350 newspapers across the country.

Prior to Court TV, Jarrett worked for a number of local stations including KCSM-TV in San Francisco, California; WMDT-TV in Salisbury, Maryland; WKFT-TV in Raleigh, North Carolina and KSNW-TV in Wichita, Kansas. While at KSNW, he captured the Emmy award-winning “underpass tornado” video which was famously featured on many T.V. storm specials.

Jarrett Wikipedia Biography

Jarrett was born in Los Angeles and raised in nearby San Marino, California, graduating from San Marino High School in 1973.[2] He graduated magna cum laude from Claremont Men's College in 1977 with a degree in political science[citation needed]. He graduated from law school at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, in 1980, and worked as a defense attorney for several years in San Francisco with the firm of Gordon & Rees LLP. He maintains his California bar license[1] and has taught law as an adjunct professor at New York Law School and lectured at other law schools.[3]

Jarrett joined the Fox News Channel in November 2002. He co-anchors weekend newscasts with Heather Childers and serves as a substitute anchor weekdays for America's Newsroom (in for Bill Hemmer), Happening Now (in for Jon Scott), and Shepard Smith Reporting for (in for Shepard Smith). He is also a correspondent for the network's one-hour documentaries, and he serves as a legal analyst for both FNC and the Fox Business Network. Although he lacks a journalism degree, he covered the Iraq War as a correspondent for Fox based in Baghdad from May through July, 2003. Embedded with the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division, he was among the first to report from Fallujah.

Prior to joining Fox, Jarrett worked at MSNBC as an anchor and correspondent. He was anchoring the morning of September 11, 2001 during the 9/11 attacks. He also served as a correspondent covering the Second Intifada in November and December 2001, reporting and anchoring newscasts from Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Jarrett reported "live" from the Ben Yehuda Street bombing in Jerusalem on December 1, 2001 when two suicide bombers and a car bomb killed 13 people, including many children, and injured 188 others.

Jarrett also worked at Court TV (the network now known as TruTV) for eight years, serving as the anchor of Prime Time Justice. He hosted the network's nationally syndicated half-hour magazine show, Inside America's Courts, which was seen daily on broadcast stations (NBC in New York City and Los Angeles) and weekends on CNBC. He was a main anchor for the O.J. Simpson murder trial on location in Los Angeles in 1995, and he covered other major trials including the Menendez brothers, William Kennedy Smith, Jeffrey Dahmer, Rodney King, Marv Albert, and former au pair Louise Woodward. His weekly legal column, syndicated by Knight Ridder/Tribune Media, was distributed to 350 newspapers across the country.[3]

Prior to Court TV, Jarrett worked for a number of local stations including KCSM-TV in San Francisco, California; WMDT-TV in Salisbury, Maryland; WKFT-TV in Raleigh, North Carolina and KSNW-TV in Wichita, Kansas. While at KSNW, he captured the Emmy award-winning "underpass tornado" video which was famously featured on many T.V. storm specials.[4][5]

According to a BetterWhois database, Jarrett's website was created on December 4, 2016. Based off Internet Archive's archives of Gregg Jarrett's website, the website was under construction as of December 20, 2016 but by February 1, 2017, the website had been launched.

Jarrett's About page matches the Biography section on Wikipedia as it stood from November 28, 2016 to January 2, 2017.

Jarrett also edited his Wikipedia page. There are two Wikipedia accounts that seem to be connected to Jarrett, greggjarrett and thegreggjarrett. Jarrett's website is TheGreggJarrett.Com. Both of the accounts have only edited Jarrett's page according to Wikipedia's User Contributions page. The "greggjarrett" account even claims to be Jarrett in a edit summary when it wrote, "I deleted a lengthy reference to a video error which I had nothing to do with." The user also deleted an unsourced section on a prank pulled on Jarrett by a Howard Stern user. The users also added additional details, photos, and links.

In an email to TKNN, Jarrett denied creating the Wikipedia page (which we did not claim), but confirmed editing the page, "I read it at the time and contributed some basic information that was not contained therein. I haven’t looked at it since. This was probably 6 or 7 years ago."

When TKNN pointed out that Wikipedia has policies about conflict of interest (which Jarrett did not follow), Jarrett responded, "I recall seeing the Wikipedia page several years ago and contributing some basic information about myself.  I did not know that was against their policy." He also stated that "As for these recent 'edits' in 2017 and 2016… that was not me."

"Wikipedia volunteer editors have created policies over the years to guard for neutrality and reliability on Wikipedia," the Wikimedia Foundation said to TKNN in an email. "One of these policies is related to conflicts of interest -- that is, if someone has a close affiliation with the subject of an article, they are strongly discouraged from editing that article directly so as to protect the neutrality and integrity of Wikipedia. These policies are upheld by volunteer administrators, more senior, trusted editors who have certain oversight tools on Wikipedia."

"If anyone has concerns of conflict of interest editing on Wikipedia, they can submit a post to the conflicts of interest noticeboard on Wikipedia to ask other volunteer editors and administrators to evaluate and respond to potential violations."

Wikipedia also has a policy against autobiographies. On the User Talk pages for both Greggjarrett and thegreggjarrett, other editors noted the potential for a conflict of interest (which is also to be disclosed).


About Tyler

Tyler is the chief media reporter for TKNN, with the news organization since its founding in November of 2010. He has previously served as chief political reporter and chief political anchor for TKNN.

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