‘Cover-up’ claims

A leading tennis journalist with The Times has admitted to plagiarism, with additional reports claiming his behaviour was known about for some time.

Neil Harman has been chief tennis correspondent with the newspaper since 2002, but has been exposed as an individual who has been passing off other journalists’ work as his own, reports deadspin.com.

Harman had been producing the yearly edition of Wimbledon: The Official Story of The Championships since 2004, but – after the cat was let out of the bag – admitted ripping off the work of fellow writers to finish the book saying “there was no excuse for such shoddy work”.

Deadspin.com printed an anonymous email that said Harman had been engaged in “rampant plagiarism” while writing his books on Wimbledon: All you need is a copy of the 2013 Wimbledon annual and Google and you’ll find hit after hit of stolen material.

The UK magazine Private Eye reported that employees at Wimbledon had known months earlier that chunks of the book had been copied, but it was on sale during this year’s tournament, writes Ben Rothenberg on slate.com.

Harman was not commissioned to write this year’s book, but did contribute a feature on Andy Murray.