For Sports Illustrated, report about fake authors is latest stumble

Three years ago, journalists at Sports Illustrated were worried that the venerable magazine's new owners and operators were drastically lowering its standards. They noted reports of plagiarism, and worried about substandard writing and the use of freelance reporters with little due diligence. The journalists also wanted better pay, greater transparency during the hiring process and a guarantee that all work published on the Sports Illustrated website would be edited.

It appears that things have not improved since then.

On Monday, science and technology publication Futurism reported that Sports Illustrated had published product reviews under fake author names with fake author biographies. Futurism could find no evidence that the supposed authors were real, and the photographs with the bios could be found on websites that sell artificial intelligence-generated headshots...