WHAT HAPPENED: Mediaite, a left-leaning news and politics website, has faced recent backlash for a series of errors, including fabricated quotes and misattributed information, leading to the suspension of its founding editor, Colby Hall. A glaring error arose when Mediaite’s newsletter of newsletters (One Sheet), awarded Breaker Media the “newsletter of the day” for a story it hadn’t ever reported.

DETAIL: One Sheet, launched by Mediaite to aggregate media newsletters for $8 a month, has repeatedly included false quotes and misattributions. On multiple occasions, it apparently fabricated statements attributed to outlets like Status and NiemanLab, prompting corrections.

KEY QUOTE: “We’ve barely won a chook raffle here at Breaker so it was a surprise to us that we won newsletter of the week for something we did not write,” Cartwright told Status on Tuesday.

❝ ANOTHER QUOTE: “We presented your findings to Colby Hall who insists the errors were purely a result of sloppiness in how he aggregated and categorized information, not from the use of A.I. Regardless, it is completely unacceptable and Colby has been suspended from Mediaite pending further investigation.” – Mediaite’s Joe DePaolo.

CONTEXT: Mediaite co-founder Dan Abrams had promoted the One Sheet newsletter as a solution to the overwhelming number of subscription-based newsletters, raising ethical concerns at the time about whether it would harm independent journalists by aggregating their paid content. You can sign up for The National Pulse’s newsletter, which doesn’t have fabricated quotes, here.