--- title: "A Prominent PR Firm Is Running a Fake News Site That’s Plagiarizing Original Journalism at Incredible Scale" description: "A PR firm is running a strange AI-fueled plagiarism mill that's ripping off — and mangling — a huge amount of local and national reporting." date: "2026-04-17" modified: "2026-04-17" authors: - name: "Maggie Harrison Dupré" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/mharrison" url: "https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/national-today-ai-plagiarizing" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" tags: - "ai slop" --- # A Prominent PR Firm Is Running a Fake News Site That’s Plagiarizing Original Journalism at Incredible Scale ![Person wearing a white mask and an orange hooded sweatshirt, typing on a laptop keyboard in a dark environment with dramatic orange and green lighting.]() *Illustration by Tag Hartman-Simkins / Futurism. Source: Getty Images* On Tuesday evening, we published an [original interview]() with a researcher who had recently coauthored an intriguing study about the effects of AI on users' cognition. A news site called *National Today* quickly sprang into action: by ten o'clock that night, it had [published a piece]() that was obviously a reworded version of our story, including a direct quote from the interview we'd conducted. But instead of crediting us as the source of the information, as would be conventional, *National Today* made no mention of *Futurism*, and didn't even link to our article. Instead, it presented the reporting as if it were the original source. In other words, the *National Today* piece — which bears no byline — is blatant plagiarism. And this isn't the first time this has happened. Last week, for example, *National Today* ran a story about a controversial GLP-1 marketer called Medvi. It was obvious that *National Today* ripped us off, because it'd [again stolen a quote]() we'd [obtained from an expert while reporting](), and had again failed to mention us or link to our work. Before that, it [published a dupe]() of a [*Futurism* blog]() about a realtor who accidentally posted a real estate listing that included an AI-generated demon crawling out of a mirror, also without giving us any credit. We're not the only target. Once we started looking into *National Today*, we realized that it's doing the same thing to countless other publications, ranging from top newspapers to local newsrooms across the country: stealing their original reporting and using it to publish a torrent of what appear to clearly be AI-generated articles, complete with bizarre errors and hallucinations. The scope is immense. We tried to count how many it published in a single day, but lost count around 300. The site's theft is blatant. In a [single article]() it published this week about writer and actress Lena Dunham, *National Today* plagiarized direct quotes from three separate interviews Dunham gave to prominent outlets — *[The New York Times]()*, *[Vanity Fair]()*, and *[The Guardian]()* — without attributing any of them. In a particularly ghoulish example, last week *National Today* stole the work of Mellie Valencia, a reporter at the East Texas broadcaster *KTRE* who had [reported out a heartbreaking story]() about a local mother whose 10-year-old daughter tragically passed away from a rare brain tumor in March. Despite the deeply sensitive nature of the reporting, *National Today* still spat out a [plagiarized copy](). "This is very upsetting to see," Valencia told *Futurism*, adding that a "lot of leg work was put into the story and real human connections were made with the family — and to see it pulled and replicated... is sad." "My hope is that since *KTRE* is one of the only stations covering this area," Valencia continued, "people will head to our website instead of other websites to get the most up to date information." Others have noticed *National Today's* theft. While looking into this story, we discovered that earlier this week, a writer at the Humboldt Country, California-focused outlet *Lost Coast Outpost* named Ryan Burns had penned a [devastating blog]() calling out *National Today* for ripping off stories by his employer and its peers in the area. "The *Lost Coast Outpost*'s content has likewise been stolen and rewritten, sans credit, by these soulless algorithms and their douchebag creators," Burns wrote in the piece. *National Today* publishes this deluge of plagiarized material in dozens of sections on its site that feature local-sounding titles — like *NYC Today*, *Sacramento Today*, *Cleveland Today*, and *Harrisburg Today* — and which are designed in a way that makes it look them look a local news sites. We found both Google Search and Google News surfacing the site's pilfered content, where it often appeared alongside local reporting. ![A screenshot showing Google News featuring a story by National Today alongside local reporting.]() After we reached out to Google with questions about this story, most *National Today* results disappeared from both Google Search and Google News. "Our policies prohibit producing content at scale for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings," the company said in a statement. "While we don’t comment on spam penalties against individual sites, we take appropriate action when we identify violations of our policies. We go to great lengths to fight webspam in our search results, and 99 percent of Search visits are spam free." In addition to the incredible speed at which it churns out all this slop, *National Today* is full of comically terrible errors that make it difficult to believe that any human is even skimming its articles before publication. One issue is that the AI generating all the articles often seems to get confused and replace real people's names with "Jane Doe." In one recent piece, *National Today* [reported]() that a NASA astronaut aboard Artemis 2 named "John Doe" had dedicated a Moon crater to his deceased wife, "Jane Doe." In reality, the [astronaut's name is Reid Wiseman]() and his wife, who passed away in 2020, was Carroll Wiseman. Another [recent *National Today* article](), about a grisly sex crime in Burlington, Vermont, attributes a quote to a "Chief Jane Doe." But there is no Chief Jane Doe in Burlington; the name of the actual [police chief]() there is Shawn Burke. More of its slop articles [identify]() "Jane Doe" as a "Securities Exchange Commission official" (there is no SEC official named Jane Doe) and as "Governor of Iowa" (the current [governor]() of Iowa is named Kim Reynolds.) *National Today* even goes as far as to misquote the Pope. In one [recent article]() about the ongoing rift between president Donald Trump and Pope Leo XIV, *National Today* claims that, in response to Trump posting a widely-decried AI-generated image of himself as a Jesus Christ figure on his truth social account, the Pontiff remarked that "Jesus probably would not be on board with that." There's no evidence that Pope Leo ever said said that, or anything even close. Sometimes the site's AI seems to get stuck on a certain quote, repeatedly jamming it into articles where it makes no sense. One quote we found — "We must not let individuals continue to damage private property in San Francisco," which appears to be wholly fabricated — is repeated in a slew of stories that make mention of neither crime nor San Francisco, such as [one about the Dallas Cowboys](), another about a [biotech company in the Boston area](), and yet another about New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani [hosting a tax day event](). \*\*\* Perhaps the most surprising thing about *National Today* is that it isn't run by some fly-by-night content mill. Instead, it's the project by the TOP Agency, a flashy branding and public relations agency that claims to have worked with nationally-known companies including Microsoft, Intel, Budweiser, Universal Music Group, US Bank and Discover Card. On LinkedIn, its CEO Benjamin Kaplan describes it as the "fastest growing viral publicity company in the world." Kaplan is even listed as an author on *National Today*, where his name is attached to numerous clearly plagiarized stories. One *[National Today ]()*[story]() carrying his byline, about San Francisco public health workers pushing back against clinic closures, lifts quotes directly from [reporting]() by the independent outlet *Mission Local*. Another of [Kaplan's stories]() lifts wording directly from an [interview by the Commonwealth Club](). Neither give any credit. Last week, we found while reporting this story, a journalist named Robert Cox [caught *National Today*]() ripping off a local crime story he wrote for *Talk of the Sound*, a local outlet serving New Rochelle, New York. "Over the course of a week, I put in significant original work... to produce a timely, accurate article that set the stage for ongoing reporting as the case moves toward trial or a possible plea deal," Cox wrote of the theft, adding that the *National Today* dupe he discovered "adds no independent sourcing, no new facts, and no original analysis." "There is also no attribution, no link, and no credit given to *Talk of the Sound* or to my reporting," he wrote. "Just Kaplan passing off my work as his own. How is this not copyright infringement and theft of my original copyrighted work?" According to a description on TOP's site, *National Today* exists to help brands "Create Ownable Viral Moments for your brand" and "reach 10M consumers, 100K media outlets, and 10K influencers across traditional, digital, and social media." In other words, TOP seems to be saying, *National Today* is a marketing vehicle for its clients — made possible by the theft of local journalism on an almost incomprehensible scale. It's hard to say whether to take this claim at face value — what good would it do to TOP's clients to be featured in plagiarized slop articles on a little-known site? But it's hard to believe anyone would go to the work of generating untold thousands of the fake news pieces without some scheme to make money. ![A screenshot of TOP Agency's homepage, which lists National Today as a platform for brands to "create ownable viral moments."]() It's not clear whether TOP built *National Today* from scratch, or acquired an existing site and transformed it into a firehose of pilfered, error-ridden fake local journalism. (Its website includes an [apocryphal-sounding account]() of its founding that describes its mission as "spreading the love to all.") Historically, though, the site appears to have been dedicated to content about holidays. Its main landing page still hosts a daily calendar of holidays that range from the very serious to completely ridiculous; April 16 alone, according to *National Today*, is the "Day of the Mushroom," "Save the Elephant Day," and "National Joseph Day," the latter of which appears to simply be a day of celebration for all guys named Joseph. "We keep track of fun holidays and special moments on the cultural calendar," reads *National Today*'s "about" page, "giving you exciting activities, deals, local events, brand promotions, and other exciting ways to celebrate." While *National Today* has been around since at least 2017, its flood of plagiarized news slop appears to be a much more recent addition. Archived versions of the site show the news content starting to crop up around January 2026. We sent multiple emails to *National Today* and TOP requesting comment for this story. We haven't heard back. We did, however, learn [from *National Today*]() that February 17 is "Prevent Plagiarism Day." Unfortunately, it seems like we'll have to wait until next year to celebrate. **More on AI and the web:** *[Analysis Finds That Google’s AI Overviews Are Providing Misinformation at a Scale Possibly Unprecedented in the History of Human Civilization]()* ## Author At Futurism, I've reported extensively on the rise of AI as a cultural and business force shaping the media industry, and more broadly how those dynamics are changing how we all consume and share information and relate to one another. I'm also fascinated by public health policy and ethics, the role of emerging tech in politics and governance — and the powerful people and forces at those intersections — climate change, and the environment. My investigation on Sports Illustrated's use of AI-generated authors with fictional biographies won a 2024 Mirror Award for "Best Story on Media Coverage of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism and the Media" from Syracuse University's SI Newhouse School, I contributed to Niemen Lab's 2025 Predictions for Journalism series, and I've discussed my work for Futurism during appearances on NPR, CNN, the BBC, the CBC, and more. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I played Division I field hockey for the Minutewomen as a midfielder. Since then, I've lived in New Orleans, Louisiana and Manhattan, New York. I spend my free time running, reading, perusing archival fashion, and searching for the world’s best negroni. I also have a debonair tuxedo cat, Westley, who's named after "The Princess Bride." ### Author social links [Bluesky]()