Yesterday Media Matters published a blog post by Eric Hananoki about a number of very similar op-ed pieces that showed up in various papers across the country:

Procter & Gamble placed nearly identical op-eds pushing for corporate tax cuts from different authors in numerous papers

The Procter & Gamble story reminded me of this blog post that I wrote last month about three state directors of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) whose op-ed pieces were exactly the same (other than mentioning different senators). One was by West Virginia's state director Gil White and his op-ed appeared in the Sunday Wheeling News-Register on November 26. Yesterday, I emailed a link to my post to Media Matters and suggested that they might want to look into the matter. Today they published:

GOP leadership touted pro-tax plan op-eds that were deceptive cut-and-paste jobs

with a subheading:

Lobbying group NFIB placed virtually identical op-eds about taxes from different authors in newspapers

(You can read the Media Matters story here.)

Reporter Hananoki and Media Matters contacted the editors of the various papers:

Editors at the papers which published the NFIB op-eds criticized the organization for its tactics and said that had they known the opinion pieces were cut-and-paste jobs their outlets wouldn’t have run the pieces.

Local Editor Mike Myer responded:

Mike Myer, executive editor at The Intelligencer, said that they "were not aware the same language was used by other authors. Had we known, we would have requested a change or, at the very least, noted similar or the same language was used elsewhere by other authors.”